B.C. lawyers receiving extortion threats, legal regulator warns

VANCOUVER — The Law Society of British Columbia says it has become aware of lawyers receiving extortion threats for “substantial sums of money.”

The legal profession regulator sent out a notice to its members that says lawyers have been targeted with threats to their physical safety and it urges victims to contact police.

The memo was sent to Conservative member of the legislature Steve Kooner, the Opposition attorney general critic, who’s a lawyer and a member of the society.

He released a statement Friday calling for extortion to be made a terrorism offence under the Criminal Code.

Kooner said that lawyers being threatened represent a “disturbing escalation” of what he calls the province’s “extortion crisis.”

B.C. has set up an Extortion Task Force to investigate dozens of extortion attempts and subsequent shootings — many of them aimed at South Asian business people — that have terrorized several communities in the province.

Kooner said in an interview Friday that he was “shocked” to learn of threats toward lawyers, and had never heard of legal professionals being targeted in his nearly two decades practising law.

“We’ve heard about this extortion crisis targeting business owners, homeowners, and bystanders,” he said. “Now it’s targeting legal professionals, it’s targeting the lawyers who are officers of the court. They are the protectors of our legal system.”

He said the federal government should move urgently to classify extortion as a terrorism offence.

“People are being terrorized, and now lawyers are being terrorized,” he said.

He said threats against those who uphold the justice system represent an attack on the system as a whole, highlighting the need for a stronger response.

“Why this could be even more concerning is certain lawyers may not want to be anywhere around extortion related offences or charges,” he said. “They may not want to represent or they may not want to act on these types of offences fearing for their own safety.”

The Law Society of B.C. and the B.C. Attorney General’s Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 14, 2025.