CALGARY, AB: The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms announces that an appeal has been filed in the case of Alberta lawyer Roger Song, challenging the Law Society of Alberta’s power to impose mandatory “cultural competence” and other ideological conditions on lawyers in the province.
The appeal follows the September 12, 2025, ruling of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta, which effectively upheld the Law Society’s authority to compel lawyers to complete mandatory training and to amend its Code of Conduct to prohibit “harassment” and “discrimination” along ideological lines.
Mr. Song, a former law professor in Beijing who immigrated to Canada after living through Mao’s violent Cultural Revolution and a lifetime of Maoist indoctrination, argued that the Law Society’s actions amount to compelled ideology and political coercion that violate critical professional independence and his Charter rights under section 2(a) on freedom of conscience and belief and section 2(b) on freedom of expression.
Mr. Song’s appeal challenges several Law Society actions including:
- Rule 67.4, which purports to empower the Society to mandate ideological training;
- a “Professional Development Profile” that redefines competence to include ideologically compliant belief, speech, and advocacy;
- Rules 67.2 and 67.3, which compel lawyers to submit annual continuing professional development plans to the regulator which must be developed with reference to the Professional Development Profile; and
- Part 6.3 of the Code of Professional Conduct, which redefines discrimination and harassment in vague and ideological terms.
Constitutional lawyer Glenn Blackett said, “The Law Society seems bent on transforming Alberta lawyers into a sort of woke commissariat, who see Western legal systems like our Constitution as systems of colonial and anti-black oppression.”
“Unfortunately, the lower Court largely refused to look at the evidence or consider the arguments. It viewed the political nature of the Law Society’s conduct as something that attracted immunity from judicial review. Mr. Song and I think that’s plainly wrong. The Law Society has no place in politics and it’s the Court’s job to say so,” he added.
The appeal will seek to overturn the lower court’s decision and to consider the central question: can the regulator of lawyers adopt any political objective, much less one that is hostile to the Constitution?
