Missing book, non-existent honour, leaked membership list among new Turpel-Lafond revelations
CBC
The setting for Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond's 2013 speech, entitled "Listening to the marginalized to address inequality," could hardly have been more prestigious.
She was a featured speaker at an event called Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, which was billed as "Canada's largest gathering of scholars across disciplines." It brought around 6,000 "academics, researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners" to the University of Victoria (UVic) to help "shape the Canada of tomorrow."
At the time, Turpel-Lafond was B.C.'s representative for children and youth, charged by the B.C. Legislature with holding the provincial government accountable for its treatment of young people in care.
The former judge and law professor urged the crowd to take seriously the plight of marginalized Indigenous children on reserve, where "we have crappy teachers. We have crappy schools. We have very poor quality supports for those kids."
To illustrate to the crowd how their individual action could help elevate a marginalized person, she offered an example from her own life.
"John Nilson, where are you," she asked.
Nilson was apparently in the crowd. Between 1995 and 1999 he had been Saskatchewan's minister of justice and attorney general.
Eventually she spotted him and said he "gave me a Q.C. as a lawyer, which gave me a lot of status, even though I myself was a very marginalized voice in the legal profession." A Q.C. designation is a significant honour granted by the provincial government to accomplished lawyers.
Watch Turpel-Lafond thanking Nilson:
Oddly, CBC has been unable to find any evidence she was actually granted a Q.C.
According to a statement from the Ministry of Justice, "there is no record of a Q.C. designation," for Turpel-Lafond. The Law Society of Saskatchewan echoed that point.
Her claim is also unlikely for another reason. A Q.C. is only awarded to lawyers with a minimum of 10 years of service. Turpel-Lafond was called to the bar in 1991 and was appointed a judge in 1998, giving her just seven years. Judges are not eligible to receive a Q.C. designation.
In an email, CBC asked Turpel-Lafond why she claimed to have a Q.C. She hasn't replied. Nilson, who retired from politics in 2016, also hasn't replied to a series of voicemails, emails and text messages.
For more than three decades, Turpel-Lafond has been at the forefront of Canadian public life, helping to shape policy and legislation related to Indigenous people. Throughout that time she has claimed to be a treaty Indian of Cree ancestry.
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