The Attorney General of Ontario has announced that the province is going to reinstate the designation of some lawyers as “King’s Counsel”. The government stopped appointing QCs back in the mid-1980s, so Ontario is finally going to have some counsel “learned in the law” after a forty year gap.
https://news.ontario.ca/en/bulletin/1003229/ontario-reinstitutes-kings-counsel-designation
Good news. I recall that when Ontario stopped appointing QCs back then, many lawyers were not happy.
Do you know why Ontario stopped appointing QCs back then? (I don’t; I’m just wondering if you, or anybody else does.)
The version I heard (I was in law school in Ontario at the time) was that after 40 years of the PCs being power, it had devolved into a pure patronage / corruption thing. That only Tory lawyers would get it, and only if they had donated to the party. Not a quid pro quo, of course. Anything that crass would be a criminal offence. Just that if you applied for one and hadn’t donated, your odds of getting one were poor.
Ian Scott QC was the AG in the Peterson Liberal government that toppled Big Blue in 1985. He initially said that the Grits would abolish the QC, but after howls of outrage from the bar, they simply stopped appointing anyone as QC. If there are any KCs left in Ontario prior to this appointment, they would likely be quite elderly and no longer practising.
There was an article last fall in the Law Times, where it was suggested that the bar wanted it restored, to help their competitiveness in international practice and arbitrations. “KC” / “QC” has meaning in other Commonwealth countries, so the poor Ontario lawyers were being shut out.
Plus, two comments about the difficulties Ian Scott (Grit) and Roy McMurtry (Tory) faced with QCs:
The lawyers calling for its restoration last fall said that it would have to be a merit-based system.
IANAL, nor much connected to people in the profession. I did hear an argument that the QC in BC was often a party/political thing, with various parties and governments. And that it was often about service to the profession. This, the argument went, was not always understood by members of the public, who assumed the QC was a distinction denoting great skill, etc., and so might be prejudicial. “If the prosecutor or X’s attorney is a QC and Y’s attorney isn’t, why, surely X’s attorney must know more and thus be more likely to be correct.” Thus, the argument concluded, QCs should be abolished.
Except the jurors don’t hear it mentioned. The judge refers to “counsel” indifferently, and counsel refer to each other in court as “my friend” or “my learned friend”. There’s no name-plate with “Jane Smith, KC” in front of the Crown or the defence, and the jurors don’t see the legal briefs that have the names of counsel on them. The KC robes are slightly different from the common barrister robes, but the differences are subtle. Unless a juror is already familiar with the counsel, and the traditions of the bar, they wouldn’t know that a lawyer is KC or not.
The Wikipedia article summarises why the Liberals stopped giving them out:
I had heard this too, but my father got his QC in the early 80s and he was definitely NOT a PC supporter. He was actually a Liberal riding president and helped run the election war room for Robert Kaplan federally and Monte Kwinter provincially.
It may have helped that his senior partner was a big PC fundraiser and powerbroker.
Maybe he was one of the merit appointments McMurtry mentioned. 
I heard that “QC” back then stood for “Quite Conservative”.
I remember him telling me that Eddie Goodman expected all the partners to be politically engaged, but he didn’t care what flavour. Being part of the process was important to him
Goodman was a very good lawyer, highly respected, and ran a good shop. Since your dad was there, he was a good lawyer.
Thank you for the kind words. Last Thursday would have been his 86th birthday and he’s been gone almost 3 years.
Makes sense, unless the press reports the KC title, or a juror googles the attorney or sees it on a bus bench ad? Anyway, it’s not my theory, so your response works for me!
bear in mind, I may have a personal interest here… 
It’s hard thinking of the loved ones who have gone before.
What’s PC?
“Progressive Conservative.” It’s a political party in the province of Ontario.
Thanks for the explanation, @Northern_Piper . It makes sense—our neighbour back then, a QC, would typically have some kind of important position in the local PC candidate’s campaign; and I had a few relatives, also QCs, who would never vote Liberal or NDP, even if you paid them.
Fascinating - I had no idea of the past shenanigans with QCs in Ontario.
What form would merit selection now take? Applications by interested lawyers? A lawyer/lay review committee? Review, reaction and/or approval by the Ontario AG or judges?
The way it works in my province is that a lawyer has to make a formal application with cv, showing professional accomplishments, community service, etc, with references. That goes to a committee composed of the Attorney General, president of the Law Society, president of the Canadian Bar Association provincial branch, and Chief Justices of the KB and Court of Appeal, which meets and discusses candidates. The AG then makes recommendations to the provincial Cabinet, which decides who will be appointed. The actual appointment is made by a patent issued under the Great Seal of the province, signed by the AG, the Premier and the Lt Gov.
There’s an informal limit on the number appointed each year. It seems to hover around 15 or 16. Since the number of practising lawyers in the province is around 1,800, that’s less than 1% of the Bar each year.
Some office-holders automatically get a KQ if they don’t already have one when they’re appointed: the Attorney General, the Deputy AG, and the Director of Public Prosecutions.
I think that sort of review is fairly standard now in the provinces that have retained the KC. I think that the episode in Ontario in the 80s triggered a more formal process in the other provinces.
Could someone please explain to us 'Murricans (and other non-Commonwealth folk) what makes a QC/KC different from other lawyers? Is this related in any way to the barrister/solicitor distinction?