The surprise announcement included a long list of lawyers newly appointed as KCs, included cabinet minister Caroline Mulroney, who has never been qualified to practise law in Ontario, other cabinet ministers, a long list of party hacks and friends-of-Doug, and one or two respected counsel for cover.
Former premier David Peterson, whose government abandoned the granting of QC's in the 1980s, said
he was “shocked by the effrontery” of the Tories’ decision, saying his government had scrapped the designation because it had become “corrupted.
“It lost all meaning, and so any principled approach would have been to stop them,” said Peterson, a K.C. himself, who now serves as chair of Torstar, the Toronto Star’s parent company.
“I just think it’s unbelievable that they would reinstitute this.”
It's impossible not to notice how the scraps and tags of monarchical honours that survive in Canada are so often used for political manipulations like this. The Queen's Counsel designation originated in Canada in the 1840s, simultaneously with the achievement of responsible government, which empowered politicians to act in the name of the Crown -- and the QC was being denounced for being mostly about patronage and favoritism at least as early as 1867.
Note: I searched this Toronto Star news item on Google and it came up no problem, despite all the news about Google blocking all Canadian news feeds.
Update, July 5: News reports inform us that the Ford government amended the Barristers Act to require the Law Society of Ontario to call to the bar former attorneys-general of Ontario without examination or payment of fees. In the case of Caroline Mulroney, the law society complied three days before the Ford government awarded her the designation of King's Counsel.
I know when you decline an honour it seems a bit self-serving to honour oneself for having done so, but in this case it would be useful if someone could publish a list of all the genuinely distinguished lawyers who declined to be part of the Ford scam.
