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

A bullet hole is seen in the shattered window of a café as a police officer walks by outside, in Surrey, B.C., on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025. Police are investigating after shots were fired for the second time within a month at Kap's Cafe, which is linked to comic and television host Kapil Sharma. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

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.

Conservative member of the legislature Steve Kooner, the Opposition attorney general critic, says in a statement that lawyers being threatened represents a “disturbing escalation” of what he calls the province’s “extortion crisis.”

Kooner says he’s “deeply concerned” that lawyers are being targeted after business owners and families have been dealing with a wave of extortion-related crime, and he is urging the federal government to classify extortion as a terrorism offence.

He says threats against those who uphold the justice system represent an attack on the system as a whole, highlighting an “urgent” need for a stronger response and elevating extortion as a terrorism offence in the Criminal Code.

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.

The Law Society of BC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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