BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via the website. Please include your full name, daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to 'Ford promises to fix widely panned King's Counsel process,' published July 18.
Patronage abounds in the Doug Ford government with the revival of the “KC” King’s Counsel designation.
Premier David Peterson did away with the designation in the 1980s because it had become corrupted and an abuse of political power.
The designation does not provide any special privileges other than allowing attorneys to place the initials “KC” next to their names, elevating them to a special class of lawyer and allowing them to appear much more than what they truly are.
The government awarded KCs to all cabinet lawyers, including Caroline Mulroney and current Attorney General Doug Downey as well as the majority of the conservative MPPs who are lawyers, Downey’s current and former chiefs of staff, Doug Ford’s longtime lawyer, and former president of the Progressive Conservative party.
Among the first 91 nominees was Transport Minister Caroline Mulroney, who only received her call to the Ontario bar three days before the Ford government announced it would be getting a special title for lawyers. Mulroney was given this patronage designation even though she is not yet listed on the Law Society of Ontario register.
According to the Ontario regulator, they will be adding her name to the board with a status of “not practising law — employed.” Mulroney only held a licence to practise law in New York and was not an Ontario attorney even when she served a year as the province’s attorney general.
The title stinks of patronage due to the lack of clear and transparent appointment processes. This lot of appointments, there is no scrutiny or process that proves the recipients are worthy of the designation. There was no call for applications or information on the criteria for the nomination process.
Going forward, it will be a public application process, and attorneys must have shown to have contributed to the justice system and work in the public interest.
Is this payback, or future payback? Awarding cronies titles through closed-door processes is all part of the status quo under the rule of Doug Ford.
Anna Bourgeois
Ramara Township
