Benchers voted at a impromptu meeting that the LSO’s treasurer called on Thursday
Law Society of Ontario benchers passed a motion Thursday evening to release a report on the regulator’s controversial pay hike for former chief executive officer Diana Miles.
Only one bencher voted against releasing the report, while seven abstained from voting, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter. There are 53 benchers at the LSO in total.
Sixty-seven pages of the document will be released, with minor redactions, including the names and pronouns of LSO staff.
The LSO published the report on Thursday evening.
The move comes hours after 10 benchers signed a statement calling for the report’s release. LSO treasurer Peter Wardle called a special meeting of the regulator’s governing board roughly an hour after the benchers’ letter was published.
In February, the Toronto Star reported that the LSO had retained former associate chief justice of Ontario Dennis O’Connor to investigate the circumstances around a substantial salary hike for Miles, which saw her base pay rising from roughly $600,000 to nearly $1 million. Miles signed the employment contract stipulating the raise last June, but benchers did not learn about the pay increase until the end of November.
O’Connor finalized a report on his investigation in February, but the majority of benchers were only allowed to review the report for several hours before a meeting on its results, under highly restrictive conditions. The LSO announced Miles’ departure from the regulator immediately after that meeting.
At the time, Wardle said the LSO would not publicly release the report since O’Connor’s opinion “is privileged legal advice.” He added that the regulator’s benchers had decided to keep the report confidential.
In the weeks since, individual lawyers have taken to social media to call for the report’s release. Multiple legal organizations – including the Ontario Bar Association and the Federation of Ontario Law Associations, two of the largest organizations representing legal professionals in the province – have written to Wardle with similar demands.
Smaller organizations, including the Defence Counsel Association of Ottawa, the Law and Mental Disorder Association, and Women in Canadian Criminal Defence, have also asked Wardle to release the report.
