The tribunal addressed three allegations from early 2020
Those being the incidents where he:
- Used his position (at the time) as Health Minister to obtain private numbers for doctors he had been speaking to, in order to follow up on previous conversations at a public event
- Used his government email to threaten government service action against someone who had emailed the health services company managed by his wife.
- Drove to the house of a doctor who had posted a meme suggesting health-care-related conflict of interest, and shouted at them in their driveway until they removed it.
The decision from the Law Society of Alberta is 54 pages long, but (as news articles have summarized), essentially the ruling is that because Mr. Shandro wasn’t acting as a lawyer in any of these situations, they have no jurisdiction, concluding:
the Committee thought that Mr. Shandro’s conduct at the time of the events that give rise to the Citations was at times inappropriate. However, we find that the conduct did not rise to the level of conduct deserving of sanction.
Despite them being filed by private individuals, and essentially not disputing the actions in question, Shandro has described the filings with the Law Society as politically motivated and “weaponized”.
Tyler Shandro retains the “KC” OR “King’s Counsel” designation. The process of obtaining this involves references from other Alberta lawyers, and per the Alberta website includes criteria of:
- Competence, including […] sound intellectual ability with a thorough, comprehensive, and current knowledge of law and practice in the applicant’s field
- Professional qualities, including […] a history of honesty, integrity, discretion, and candid dealings in professional and personal matters including dealings with professional colleagues, clients, lay people, and the courts and in the execution of duties as an officer of the court
- the trust and confidence of others
- the respect of fellow lawyers
Tyler Shandro is currently a board member of Covenant Health.