B.C. lawyers are being threatened with extortion, regulator says, prompting calls for enforcement
CBC
The Law Society of British Columbia says it has become aware of lawyers receiving extortion threats for "substantial sums of money."
The legal profession regulator sent out a notice to its members that says lawyers have been targeted with threats to their physical safety and it urges victims to contact police.
Society spokesperson Vinnie Yuen said in a statement that the reports the Law Society received are confidential and it could not reveal the nature or number of threats to lawyers, but "at the moment the issue is not widespread."
The notice was sent to Conservative MLA Steve Kooner, the Opposition attorney general critic, who's a lawyer and a member of the society.
He released a statement Friday calling for extortion to be made a terrorism offence under the Criminal Code.
Kooner said that lawyers being threatened represents a "disturbing escalation" of what he calls the province's "extortion crisis."
B.C. has set up an extortion task force to investigate dozens of extortion attempts and subsequent shootings — many of them aimed at South Asian business people — that have terrorized several communities in the province.
Kooner said in an interview Friday that he was "shocked" to learn of threats toward lawyers, and had never heard of legal professionals being targeted in his nearly two decades practising law.
"We've heard about this extortion crisis targeting business owners, homeowners, and bystanders," he said.
"Now it's targeting legal professionals, it's targeting the lawyers who are officers of the court. They are the protectors of our legal system."
He said the federal government should move urgently to classify extortion as a terrorism offence.
"People are being terrorized, and now lawyers are being terrorized," he said.
He said threats against those who uphold the justice system represent an attack on the system as a whole, highlighting the need for a stronger response.
"Why this could be even more concerning is certain lawyers may not want to be anywhere around extortion related offences or charges," he said.
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