Alberta law society votes to keep continuing education rule following petition against Indigenous culture course 

The Law Society of Alberta rejected a motion to suspend the group’s ability to require members to undertake continuing education, multiple lawyers told Global News.

The decision comes after the Law Society of Alberta held a special meeting on Monday to vote on the motion. Roughly 4,669 active Alberta lawyers registered to attend the special meeting, which was held via Zoom.

This means lawyers practicing in Alberta will still have to take mandated continuing education courses.

Full results will be posted by the Law Society of Alberta at a later time.

The vote is a response to a petition from 51 lawyers opposed to The Path, a five-part course on Indigenous history and culture that follows one of the calls to action in the Truth and Reconciliation report.

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Glenn Blackett, a signatory to the petition, called the course “political indoctrination.”

In response, 400 lawyers filed a letter supporting the Indigenous cultural competency requirement. The letter said that the legal profession was complicit in the residential school system and its members have acted in ways that perpetuate injustices faced by Indigenous peoples.

“It really gave lawyers a bare minimum of Indigenous history in Canada, which I think is very important because a lot of them maybe never had the opportunity to learn because our education system is just catching up,” Koren Lightning-Earle told Global News on Sunday.

Lightning-Earle is the legal director of the University of Alberta’s Wahkohtowin Law and Governance lodge.

“There’s always somebody in the room that has a bit of pushback to the information I’m giving like it’s fake news or it’s not real.

–With files from The Canadian Press’ Bob Weber.