Category Archives: Sexism in the Legal Profession

Bill C-3 was introduced by the Conservatives on March 11, 2010, ostensibly to “fix” the sex discrimination in the status registration provisions of the Indian Act pursuant to the BC Court of Appeal decision in the November 2009 McIvor case, which held that the status provisions of the Indian Act violate the equality guarantees of the Charter. Bill C-3 passed second reading on March 29, and is currently before the Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. If it is passed, Canada will continue to discriminate against Aboriginal women in legislation.

This issue has a long history. Since the 1800s the racist, sexist Indian Act defined “status” Indians, thus identifying those who could (and at one time, must) live on reserves and who were subject to the Indian Act, and eligible for the meager programs made available by the federal government. The Indian Act defined an Indian as “a male Indian, the wife of a male Indian or the child of a male Indian” as per the practices of colonial patriarchy. Thus, Indian women who married “out” were stripped of their status and could not confer it to their children, while Indian men who married “out” or “in” gave their status and band membership to their wives and children and thus to their grandchildren.

Arguing the equality guarantee of section 15 of the Charter, Sharon McIvor challenged the continuing sex discrimination that gives preferred Indian status to men who married “out” as compared to women who married “out”, and to descendants of male Indians as compared to those descended from female Indians. McIvor won in the B.C. Supreme Court and in the B.C. Court of Appeal in 2007 and 2009. As a result, the federal government has to, once more, amend the Indian Act.

But Bill C-3 is not the solution. It would continue to discriminate by conferring a weaker form of “status” on reinstatees. Although the Conservatives say that it will provide access to Indian status to 45,000 descendants of previously ineligible Aboriginal women, it will not give them equal status. Descendants of reinstated women will still have less ability to transmit their status than the descendants of men. The legislated inability of one Indian parent to transmit status, known as the second generation cut-off, will apply to these women’s descendants one generation earlier than to male lineage descendants.

In addition, Bill C-3 will leave out some Aboriginal women and their descendants for no other reason than sex discrimination. For example, grandchildren who trace their Aboriginal descent through the maternal line will continue to be denied status if they were born prior to September 4, 1951 while grandchildren who trace their Aboriginal descent through the male line will not. Bill C-3 continues to exclude grandchildren descended from status Indian women who co-parented with non-status men in common law unions. Grandchildren of status Indian fathers who co-parented with non-Indian women are not excluded from registration status.

A new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives ranked the country’s 25 largest cities based on their female-friendliness. The report looked at factors such as economic security and education. But the political statistics were perhaps the most telling of the balance of power: Where are the female voices on the country’s city councils?

St John’s, for example, has no women on council. In Hamilton, women make up only 20 per cent of elected officials. Victoria – which, incidentally, took first place in the rankings – is the only city where female city councilors outnumber their male peers.

In a country fueled by the economies of its cities, a shortage of female politicians – and a lack of overall diversity – on city councils is troubling, especially considering the influence of municipal policy in residents’ lives, and the key decisions councils make about fiscal priorities, including child care and affordable housing. It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of qualified candidates: Across the country, urban-dwelling Canadian women have more education than men.

Cities with male-dominated sectors, such as tech or oil and gas, fell at the bottom of the rankings because of gaps in employment and pay. Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo took last place, with Edmonton and Calgary following closely behind at the bottom of the pack. In Alberta, for instance, the report points out that men hold 88 per cent of the construction jobs, and 76 per cent of oil and gas jobs.

Edmonton has had among the highest wages in the country, but also one of the biggest gender gaps; there, full-time female workers earn $16,000 less than men.

At the same time, the report applauded some grassroots movements to level out the urban gender playing field, including Edmonton food servers who protested being asked to wear miniskirts on the job, and a group in Quebec City that helps hearing-impaired women get access to perinatal care.

When it comes to senior city managers, the gender gap is smaller – in the top cities, women make up more than one-third of senior managers. Still, the municipal buck stops at council.

To the media’s dismay, her client is nowhere in sight. Ever since Ghomeshi pleaded not guilty to seven counts of sexual assault and one of choking, Henein has put a gag on his dulcet public tones. As one of the most respected and feared criminal lawyers in the country, she has become not only his voice but his last best hope against the possibility of a life sentence in prison.

For the lead role in this drama, no casting director could have made a better match. In looks, age and background, Ghomeshi and Henein share eerie similarities, and, within legal circles, her star power is at least equal to his. But while Ghomeshi’s on-air charm may have carried him to the loftiest reaches of the CBC only to be exposed as a sham—an artful mask concealing an alleged mean streak—Henein seems to have gone out of her way to cultivate a forbidding persona. Even one of her most grateful clients, former attorney general Michael Bryant, has described her as someone who “seemed to channel Hannibal Lecter,” and another, one-time minor league hockey coach Dave Frost, dubbed her “my shark.”

At 50, she looks a decade younger, a vision in black chic perched on $1,500 leopard-patterned Louis Vuitton pumps. They turn out to be just one pair from a collection so notorious that Ontario’s former chief justice Warren Winkler once ribbed her, “So are you going to buy a car or a new pair of shoes?” Even with the benefit of those four-inch heels, Henein seems tinier than she did in the courtroom, her hourglass figure whittled away by twice-weekly weight training sessions, her boyish bob and kohl-rimmed eyes lending her the air of a gamine. A diamond-encrusted serpent ring is her only jewellery, slithering up one ornately manicured finger, each opaline nail inscribed with a delicate black deco design. Despite the obvious time and attention she has devoted to that artful presentation, she waves off questions about her designer wardrobe. Male lawyers, she protests, never get queried about their clothes. “If I dress this way, it’s because it amuses me,” she shrugs.

While most legal firms opt for the reassuring patina of wood panelling and landscapes, Henein’s stark private office features a giant photo of a voodoo doctor named Baron Samedi strutting gleefully through a New Orleans cemetery in top hat and skull mask. Every object in these spare quarters has been edited by the same exacting eye that she brings to each case—all part of a controversial exercise in building her own edgy legal brand.