Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!lsuc!dave
From: dave@lsuc.uucp (David Sherman)
Newsgroups: tor.general
Subject: Re: Toronto Police
Summary: Crown counsel == a lawyer
Message-ID: <1989Jan27.023454.15816@lsuc.uucp>
Date: 27 Jan 89 07:34:53 GMT
References: <89Jan24.160527est.10808@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu> <385@ontenv.UUCP>
Distribution: tor
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 55

> > I am not aware of any cases where charges have been laid without
> > an investigation being made by a police force or a Crown council.
> 
> In the Donaldson case the investigations by both the crown council and
> the OPP recommended that no charges be laid...

I don't normally make an issue of spelling mistakes, but
this is one which should be clarified for informational
purposes.  It's "Crown counsel", not "council".

A council is a group of people who meet and make decisions.
Counsel is the word for a Canadian lawyer who is in court
or who is representing a client in a case which is going
to court.  Crown counsel is counsel for the Crown; Her Majesty,
as you no doubt know, is nominally the party who brings all
criminal charges to court.

So there is no "council" making the kinds of decision under
discussion.  There is Crown counsel, also known as a Crown
attorney, who is a lawyer who works for the government.

Incidentally, "Crown attorney" and "Attorney-General" are
the only cases where one refers to a Canadian lawyer as
an attorney.  It's a U.S. term for the generic lawyer,
but definitely not a Canadian one.  All members of the
Law Society of Upper Canada (i.e., lawyers entitled to
practise in Ontario) are "barristers and solicitors".
These are separate professions in England but merged here.
So you can refer to thatcharacterwhochargestoomuch as a lawyer,
barrister, solicitor, or counsel, depending on the circumstances,
but don't ever use "attorney" or we'll know you've been watching
too much American TV.  ("Counselor" is also an Americanism.)
In court, a lawyer will refer to the opposing lawyer as "my friend",
or if the opposing lawyer is a Q.C., "my learned friend".  But I
digress.

As a further aside, almost all lawyers who work as lawyers
in the federal government are officially employed by the
Department of Justice, and in the Ontario government by
the Attorney-General's office.  These are the two largest
"law firms" in the country, and they act as counsel to
all of the other (federal) departments and (provincial)
ministries.  The relationship is often very much a
lawyer-client relationship, as for example where income tax
litigation is handled by the Department of Justice on behalf
of its client Revenue Canada Taxation.  In the more normal
criminal cases, including the police shooting question,
Crown counsel is an employee of the Attorney-General's office,
which is the ministry responsible for bringing criminal
prosecutions.

David Sherman
-- 
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