Law Society of Ontario v. AA, 2026 ONCA 47
The Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision in Law Society of Ontario v. AA, 2026 ONCA 47, clarifies that the good character requirement under s. 27 of the Law Society Act, RSO 1990, c L.8 cannot be satisfied through a mechanical application of the familiar Armstrong factors alone. While remorse, rehabilitation, post-misconduct conduct, and the passage of time remain relevant considerations, the ultimate inquiry is whether licensing the applicant would be consistent with maintaining public trust and confidence in the legal profession.
In AA’s case, the Tribunal carefully analyzed the traditional factors but did not grapple with whether granting a licence was reconcilable with that broader public-trust mandate, in particular, how a relatively brief period of candour beginning in 2017 could outweigh nearly eight years of deception, including dishonesty directed at the Law Society itself during the licensing process.
Background
In 2009, AA sexually abused three children, including his eldest daughter, on three occasions over two months while living abroad in a close-knit religious community. He was not criminally charged. Between 2009 and 2017, he was dishonest with medical practitioners, child protection authorities, and the Law Society about the nature and extent of his misconduct. When he first applied for a licence in 2012, he did not disclose the abuse; an anonymous letter prompted the Law Society’s investigation, during which he was uncooperative. He withdrew that application in 2017 and applied again in 2019, triggering a referral to the Hearing Division for a good character hearing.
The Hearing Division found AA to be of good character, applying the five-factor framework from Armstrong v. Law Society of Upper Canada, 2009 ONLSHP 29, and imposed a condition prohibiting him from meeting with minor children in unsupervised settings, a condition that originated as AA’s own undertaking.
The Appeal Division upheld both findings. The Divisional Court dismissed the Law Society’s application for judicial review. The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal and remitted the matter to the Hearing Division for a fresh assessment.
The Armstrong Framework Is Not a Scorecard
The Court of Appeal’s critique was not directed at the Tribunal’s findings on the individual Armstrong factors. The Hearing Division accepted that AA’s misconduct was serious but found remorse, significant rehabilitation, no reoffending, and honest conduct since 2017. Those findings were not disturbed.
The problem was what came next. After reviewing each factor, the Tribunal simply concluded that AA had established good character, without explaining how that conclusion followed in light of the statutory purpose of maintaining public trust. As Sossin J.A. held, the individual factors “cannot be seen as ends unto themselves”: at para. 85. They are tools for answering a broader question. The Tribunal erred by treating them as a destination rather than a framework, leaving its decision, in the Court’s words, “entirely unmoored from the key legal constraints that govern the good character requirement under s. 27 of the Act”: at para. 123.
What the Tribunal failed to engage with was the significance of AA’s sustained dishonesty — not only toward medical professionals and child protection authorities, but toward the Law Society itself during the licensing process. The good character inquiry is not simply about whether a person has rehabilitated over time. It is also about whether the applicant’s conduct toward the regulator charged with protecting the public demonstrates the honesty and trustworthiness necessary to sustain public confidence in the profession.
The Condition Was Independently Fatal
The Court of Appeal also identified a second, independent flaw: the internal inconsistency created by the licensing condition itself. After finding AA to be of good character, the Hearing Division prohibited him from meeting with minor children in unsupervised settings, reasoning that this would enhance public confidence in the regulation of the profession.
The Court of Appeal disagreed. A finding of good character cannot easily coexist with a restriction premised on the idea that the applicant cannot be trusted with a particular group. Rather than reinforcing public confidence, such a demographic restriction implies that the regulator is licensing someone it does not fully trust, the opposite of what the good character requirement is designed to convey.
Sossin J.A. distinguished this from conditions upheld in cases like Sheps v. Law Society of Upper Canada, 2016 ONLSTH 124, where conditions tied to managing a health condition are consistent with a good character finding. A demographic restriction based on a history of sexual misconduct toward children is not, it implies an unresolved question about trustworthiness that a finding of good character is supposed to have resolved. That AA himself proposed the condition did not help matters; if he did not believe he could be trusted to be alone with children, that admission required engagement in the good character analysis, not mere acceptance as a reassuring add-on.
What the Decision Establishes
Law Society of Ontario v. AA, 2026 ONCA 47, does not replace the Armstrong framework or establish that any category of misconduct automatically bars licensure. The Court expressly declined to substitute its own finding, remitting the matter instead. The Armstrong factors remain the general framework for good character assessments.
What the decision clarifies is that satisfying those factors is necessary but not sufficient. The ultimate question, whether licensing an applicant is consistent with maintaining public trust , requires the Tribunal to go further. In my view, the decision points toward a two-stream assessment of post-offence conduct: rehabilitative conduct (therapy, remorse, absence of reoffending) and regulatory conduct (candour, honesty, and cooperation specifically directed toward the regulator). In AA’s case, the Tribunal’s focus remained largely on the first stream while the second went unaddressed.
Where an applicant has spent years misleading the very body charged with assessing their character, that regulatory conduct creates a deficit in public trust that clinical rehabilitation alone may not fill. A licensing regime grounded in public trust cannot treat sustained dishonesty toward the regulator as simply another factor to be weighed. It may be central to whether the public can reasonably maintain confidence in the decision to grant a licence at all.
Anya Tamir is a litigation lawyer and the principal of Tamir Litigation Law Firm in Richmond Hill, Ontario. Her practice focuses on regulatory defence before Ontario’s professional regulatory bodies, employment law, and commercial litigation.