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Letter: Lawyers just causing financial losses for TWU law school

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Dear Editor,

Apparently, the Nova Scotia Barristers Society and Ontario Law society voted to not give accreditation to Trinity Western University law school graduates [University fights back through court system, May 8, Langley Advance].

Let me list several facts that will show how ludicrous it is to try and defend this in court.

If these law societies have a beef with a policy of a university, why discriminate against the students? That’s like saying to an potential immigrant, “You come from a country where women are required to wear a veil, therefore we won’t allow you to work in our country.”

Your article stated they won’t accredit TWU law grads “unless TWU altered its religious beliefs and practices.”

How absurd to discriminate against someone’s religious beliefs! Our charter of rights states that we are free to believe whatever we want.

How can a bunch of lawyers think they are allowed to try and blackmail anyone in Canada by discriminating against them if they don’t believe what they believe?

A law society that openly states it disagrees with a group’s religious beliefs and will therefore discriminate against that group will cause everyone in that religious group to fear for biased treatment by that law society. In other words, Christians in Ontario and Nova Scotia may need to bring unbiased lawyers from other provinces to get fair representation in court cases.

The superior court has already decided overwhelmingly (8-1) in favour of TWU’s teacher education program, and that TWU is entitled to have its Community Covenant.

So what can possibly motivate these two law societies to stall TWU in its opening of a law school?

As it became clear in the BCTF’s absurd and baseless accusations that TWU teachers would be biased, the superior court decided there was not a shred of evidence that that was the case.

The two law societies now discriminating against TWU know they cannot win their case in court, so they can only try to cause as much financial loss as possible to TWU.

It is despicable that a group of lawyers would stoop so low to use such discriminating tactics against a university whose students have done extremely well after graduation, with no major issues such as bias or criminality, as far as I know.

Remi van Wermeskerken, Aldergrove