Principles

CAL is founded on and will be guided in its policy formation and in all its activities by these principles:
- We believe in a meritocratic society, bound by one shared humanity, in which race, sex and other characteristics are incidental, not essential, to our identity and relations；
- We believe in the inherent dignity, autonomy and personal responsibility of each individual citizen;
- We believe that all citizens are entitled to fundamental justice and due process and equality before the law;
- We believe that all citizens are entitled to certain fundamental rights and freedoms, including, but not limited to:
  - the right to life, liberty, and privacy;
  - the freedom of conscience and speech including the freedom to advocate, without fear of intimidation or suppression, policies which reflect their deeply held values;
  - private property and access to free markets.
  - (e) We believe the legal profession has a unique and essential role in preserving the rights and freedoms of the citizenry.
- We believe that all levels of government, and particularly the administrative agencies charged with responsibility for supervising professionals in our society, including lawyers, and delegated the power to regulate the same and levy financial and other penalties on their membership ought to be guided by these fundamental principles:
  - Constitutionalism including democracy, the rule of law, and respect for fundamental freedoms;
  - the promotion of core professional competence and ethics;
  - commitment to reason including empiricism, rational dialogue, objectivity, evidence-based decision making and transparency, and the rejection of sentimentalism, logical fallacy, relativism, post-modernism, and communism;
  - respect for a free, vibrant and contested marketplace of ideas;
  - humility;
  - honesty; and
  - the promotion of meritocracy within the profession and the protection of the public in the delivery of legal services from legal incompetence and conflicts of interest, whether financial, political or personal
We recognize that objective truth and good exists, that the search for it is valuable and necessary, and that it requires empirical observation, reason, humility, diversity of opinion, freedom of conscience and expression, falsifiability and, for many, faith.
We recognize the critical role professional regulation plays to ensure that professionals are competent and ethical and that professions and professionals remain independent of state, political or religious interference.
We recognize that it is a threat to Canadians, professions, and to freedom and democracy for people in professions, including regulators, to distort, change, make or ignore the law, including exceeding delegated rule-making powers.
Given the special relationship of trust between professionals and their clients and the diversity of professional practice, we recognize that professionals must be afforded a high degree of independence to safeguard the interests of clients within Canadian institutions and to determine necessary professional education.
We believe that legislation and regulation should always be subject to judicial review because judges protect our constitutional and inherent rights; however, judges are to interpret laws, not make them.
Members will maintain a high standard of mutual trust, honourable conduct and integrity in all dealings with each other, public officials, law enforcement, other organizations and the general public.