Profession exempt from reporting rules common to us all

Last week I wrote that lawyers should be banned from holding public office in Canada because they have a conflict of interest.

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In English, this means lawyers have been exempted from the kind of reporting requirements everyone else must abide by. These reporting rules force banks, businesses or individuals to alert authorities about suspicious transactions by suspicious persons.

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Other professionals do not enjoy these benefits, nor do their clients. For example, teachers, doctors, nurses and social workers are legally required to report any suspicion they may have of child abuse to police and child protection services. No one quarrels with this because it is the only logical way to protect children from unacceptable parents who do unacceptable things to them in private. This is to protect the social good.

The only reason lawyers are exempted from turning in their criminal, immoral or dangerous clients is due to the conflict of interest inherent in having lawyers with political power. The lawyers of the land, and other countries, ganged up and bestowed these benefits upon themselves and their colleagues.

The game is totally rigged by lawyers for lawyers.

Take the issue involved with the new money laundering and terrorist legislation. These legal lobbyists probably took the matter to court or threatened to do so. If they did go to court, their case would have been heard by another lawyer, a judge, who also has a conflict of interest. If they only threatened to go to court, but the government backed off, it was undoubtedly on the advice of internal legal counsel or external consultants who are also lawyers with conflicts.

These legal professionals would have argued that an exemption for money laundering and anti-terrorist reporting requirements is merely the logical extension of the type of client confidentiality privilege that lawyers have had for decades.

In other words, the only basis for the type of client confidentiality that already exists is that it has been blessed by courts and governments run by lawyers.

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What it really means it that lawyers now have licences to not only make money from criminals and predators but also from people who would blow up towers, children, synagogues, subways or consulates.

Clearly, client confidentiality has never been, nor will it ever be, in the public interest. And that goes for lawyers in governments, too.