The LSA’s compliance with the law has become a fraught issue as voting in the election starts Nov. 10
At a town hall Monday evening, nine lawyers hoping to secure seats on the Law Society of Alberta’s governing board were asked a question that has become a hot-button issue in this year’s bencher election: when the LSA’s board is confronted with legislation that constrains what it believes the public interest requires, what should the board do?
The question was preceded by recounting how the board has handled this exact scenario since late 2025, when the United Conservative Party passed a law that barred professional regulators like the LSA from requiring cultural competency, unconscious bias, or equity, diversity, and inclusion training.
Since March, the LSA has eliminated its EDI committee and programs for new lawyers and Indigenous students to comply with the law, the Regulated Professions Neutrality Act. The law society has also stopped requiring lawyers to complete an Indigenous cultural competency training course that is mandatory in other provinces and territories.
Kate Andrews, Canadian Pacific Kansas City’s managing director of regulatory affairs, said she would approach the conflict by evaluating the legislation and determining whether solutions are possible.
“I do think that the public interest is paramount and that it shouldn’t be sacrificed or compromised in the name of getting along with any government of the day,” Andrews argued. “That said, it may be that the benchers in this case or in a future case might determine that [the legislation] doesn’t challenge where they see the public interest lying. And when that’s the case, I expect looking for compliance would be the right thing.”
Still, Andrews said she would have liked to see how the LSA’s current benchers arrived at their response to the RPNA.
“I think one of the challenges that we have as a self-regulated profession is a lack of insight into how some of these decisions are made and what discussions are had,” she says, adding, “I’m really interested in looking at ways to increase transparency.”
Another candidate, Chris Skrobot, was more succinct.
“The law society must follow the law, as the law society is looked at as being a guardian of the rule of law, and [the] legislature legislates,” Skrobot said.
“In my view, it’s not the law society’s function to be questioning the legislation.”
Since the LSA began taking steps to comply with the RPNA, many Alberta lawyers have criticized the move, with some raising concerns directly to the law society. In October, a bencher, Moira Vane, announced she was resigning from the law society’s board, citing the LSA’s decision to dismantle its EDI committee and her loss of faith in the law society’s commitment to protecting the public interest.
Monday’s town hall was the second in a series hosted by several legal organizations, including the ITL Network and Calgary Association of Nigerian Lawyers. The town halls gave bencher candidates the chance to share their experience and platforms ahead of the election, which runs from Nov. 10 to Nov. 17.
One candidate, Saqib Javaid of SJS Law, said he shared Skrobot’s view but added that benchers should clearly explain their responses to controversial legislation to the public, using plain language.
“If the board believes the legislation limits its ability to protect the public, it should say so through a proper channel with evidence,” he said. “What it must not do is pretend the constraint does not exist, work around the law, or quietly drop a public interest duty without saying so.”
Fatima Shariff, a legal manager at the Alberta Electric System Operator, said she’s worked with many organizations structured like the LSA.
At those organizations, a good approach would be to “really look at what the legislation says, its implications, and the scope it has on our policies and our programs,” Shariff says. The task is “to distinguish between what the law requires, what it prohibits, and where discretion remains.”
She adds, “That's where I think there’s opportunity. I know that the law society is a creation of statute. It must operate within the law, but it also has an important mandate to protect the public interest… and uphold the independence and integrity of the profession.
“I think there's a way to weigh these responsibilities together.”
Two sitting benchers who are running for re-election – Afshan Naveed, a partner at Dentons, and Adam Drew, a Crown prosecutor – said confidentiality rules prevented them from speaking directly about the LSA’s response to the RPNA.
But Drew said in general, benchers in this scenario have to comply with the law because “acting against… validly enacted legislation also risks eroding public confidence in our ability to regulate.
“When lawyers defy the law, it puts us in a situation where the public doesn’t trust us to regulate ourselves,” he said. “Benchers are often called upon to set aside personal beliefs and political stances. We have to listen carefully when we speak to each other, and we have to listen carefully to the presentations and the information that we receive and then act accordingly.”
