Duty of Candour Exists in Canada

One of the more significant developments in the regulation of health professions in the UK is the codification of the duty of candour when an error is discovered: https://sml-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Greyar234.pdf. Some professions in Canada have similar obligations. In Law Society of Alberta v Schuster, 2019 ABCA 111, <http://canlii.ca/t/hzbjj> the Court upheld as reasonable the discipline finding against a lawyer who failed to inform his client of an error where $300,000 was deposited into the wrong trust account and was not immediately retrievable. The Court agreed that this error was material and that, even though the client expressed the desire not to be kept informed of all the operational details of the project, this error should have been disclosed.

The Court also found that there was no unfairness in the discipline tribunal taking a different view of the nature of the conduct than that expressed in the original complaint and investigation report.

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