Published October 22, 2026 · Nova Scotia Legal Resource editorial
The most revealing parts of a disciplinary hearing do not always concern the conduct of the person facing discipline. Sometimes they concern the institution doing the investigating: who decided to pursue an issue, what information was collected, whose complaints were encouraged, and what the decision-makers were told.
Those questions run through the December 2015 cross-examination of Victoria Rees, then Director of Professional Responsibility at the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society (NSBS), during the disciplinary proceeding involving Halifax lawyer Lyle Howe.
Howe, a Black criminal-defence lawyer, had argued that the Society’s approach to him reflected unequal treatment and the effects of racial prejudice within the justice system. The Society disputed his discrimination allegations and pursued serious disciplinary allegations concerning his practice. A panel ultimately found professional misconduct and incompetence and imposed disbarment in 2017. His Charter challenge did not succeed.
The record should not be rewritten to erase those findings. Neither should it be flattened into the suggestion that the disciplinary findings answer every question about how the case was investigated.
Rees’s own evidence permits a closer look at several specific choices. Some answers are direct admissions. Others are qualifications, denials or disputed characterizations. What follows examines both.
1. The person who does not make the final decision may still shape the case
Howe began by challenging the notion that Rees’s role was limited to collecting neutral material and delivering it to the Complaints Investigation Committee (CIC).
In transcript pages 284–285, she acknowledged conducting investigations, exercising discretion to resolve some matters before the CIC, determining what information was placed before that committee, and participating in the compilation of material for the hearing panel.
Those functions matter because the formal decision to refer a complaint to hearing is not the first consequential decision in a disciplinary case. Long before a panel hears evidence, someone decides which leads to follow, which documents to obtain, which allegations to investigate further, and how to summarize what has been learned.
But a fair account must preserve Rees’s limit on her own authority. She emphasized that the CIC made the formal referral decisions. Her evidence supports an influential investigative and advisory role; it does not make her the sole adjudicator of Howe’s discipline.
The practical question is therefore not simply, “Who decided the charges?” It is also, “What decisions shaped the information on which the committee acted?”
Read the testimony: pp. 284–285
2. A difference in the treatment of two prospective complainants
One of the clearest exchanges appears on transcript page 327. Howe contrasted Rees’s advice when he considered complaining about another lawyer with her response to complaints or concerns raised about him by Crown attorney Michelle James.
Rees agreed she had discouraged Howe from filing a complaint. She also agreed she had not discouraged James in the same way and that she had invited James to provide supporting information if she wished to advance concerns about Howe.
Howe then asked whether the number of complaints already made against him had affected Rees’s approach. Rees said it was relevant.
That is an unusually concrete question about the complaint-handling process. Why should a lawyer’s status as the subject of existing complaints be relevant to how the regulator responds when that lawyer wishes to complain about someone else? Could the same institutional history that makes one person the focus of scrutiny also make that person’s own concerns less likely to be pursued?
Those are questions raised by the evidence, not conclusions that the evidence alone resolves.
Rees gave context for her advice. She said she generally discouraged complaints arising from lawyer-to-lawyer conflict and distinguished the need to provide information to support a complaint from encouragement to complain. Whether the cases were genuinely comparable requires examination of their circumstances and the Society’s applicable policies.
What the transcript establishes is narrower, but still significant: Rees acknowledged different responses and identified an existing complaint history as relevant to her judgment.
Read the testimony: pp. 325–327
3. The marriage Rees acknowledged—and the conflict she denied
The hearing also examined Rees’s relationship with Martin Herschorn, then Director of Public Prosecutions. Howe was concerned about the significance of that relationship when he was seeking guidance about concerns involving Crown attorneys.
On transcript pages 317–318, Rees acknowledged that Herschorn was her husband. She also agreed she had not previously informed Howe of the marriage. An email discussed in evidence recorded her belief that Howe did not know about the relationship.
Howe put the apparent difficulty to her: she had suggested that he contact the Director of Public Prosecutions about a Crown-related matter, while being aware that the director was her spouse.
Rees’s response was that she was directing Howe to the official responsible for public prosecutions, not toward her husband as a private individual. She testified that she knew the advice was not motivated by their relationship, although she had recognized that Howe might perceive an ulterior motive. She also acknowledged that another Society employee could have given comparable advice (pp. 323–325).
This evidence raises a question about managing the appearance of impartiality, not proof of an actual conflict of interest. A relationship can justify transparent procedures even where the advice itself is appropriate. Conversely, the mere existence of a marriage does not prove an improper motive.
A careful reading retains both propositions.
Read the testimony: pp. 317–325
4. A “reactive” regulator can conduct an extensive investigation
Another important exchange concerns the Society’s basic approach to complaints.
At transcript pages 414–416, Rees agreed the NSBS was reactive rather than an organization that went looking for complaints without a reason. Yet she explained that a concern received by the Society could lead to an investigation and additional information-gathering. She distinguished seeking information about an existing issue from seeking entirely new complaints.
The distinction is legitimate and important. A regulator cannot always determine whether a concern is well-founded without gathering evidence. That activity does not automatically convert its complaints system into an improper search for charges.
Still, the power to expand an investigation raises questions of scope and proportionality. When does following up a concern become an unusually broad examination of a person’s practice? What controls ensure comparable concerns about different lawyers receive comparable levels of attention? And when a lawyer raises race-based concerns about the surrounding professional environment, how are those concerns considered within the investigation?
The December testimony shows that Rees was questioned about these matters. It does not conclusively answer each of them.
Read the testimony: pp. 414–416
5. The difference between a formal complaint and information considered by the CIC
The cross-examination became particularly exacting when Howe asked what had reached the CIC concerning an issue arising from the transcript of his criminal trial.
Rees initially distinguished a possible complaint from information-gathering. The exchange then turned to an April 2015 memorandum she had prepared for the committee.
At pages 421–424, she confirmed that her memorandum went to the CIC while Howe’s separate April 13 letter did not go to it as a standalone document. She also explained that the committee had received an opinion concerning potential Code of Conduct issues and ultimately decided not to lay charges based on that aspect of the evidence.
The difference between those statements is not semantic. A statement that “the Society laid a complaint” would be inaccurate if it merely explored whether conduct warranted charges and later chose not to proceed. Yet a statement that “the committee was never told about the issue” would also be incomplete when it received a memorandum describing it.
The transcript illustrates why record-based reporting requires attention to procedural distinctions, rather than broad claims about what a regulator did or did not investigate.
Read the testimony: pp. 421–424
6. A contemporaneous memorandum and a direct disagreement
The December 2015 questioning ended with a useful example of the distinction between a documentary inconsistency and a proven false statement.
On pages 473–476, Howe asked whether Rees had directed Michelle James to gather information from other Crown attorneys about him. Rees said she had not asked James to collect complaints; she had told James that information supporting other people's concerns would be necessary if the complaint were to represent their views.
Howe then took Rees to a September 24, 2013 memorandum in which James described her canvassing as having been done at the Society’s behest. Asked whether that description was accurate, Rees expressly disagreed.
That makes the document worth reading. The memorandum and testimony describe the Society’s role differently. It would, however, misstate the evidence to say Rees admitted ordering a canvass or that the contradiction alone proves dishonesty. A decision about which account to accept would require the full documentary and testimonial context.
Read the testimony: pp. 473–476
The wider institutional context has changed
Howe’s questioning occurred years before the NSBS publicly acknowledged systemic discrimination in its own organization and the legal profession. In April 2021, the Society acknowledged that broader problem. In October 2024, it accepted the 21 recommendations in Douglas Ruck’s independent report, Regaining Trust, and apologized for its past failures to address systemic discrimination.
Those developments do not retroactively determine that Rees acted unlawfully. They do make it reasonable to revisit how the Society understood and responded to allegations of unequal treatment while exercising regulatory discretion.
Howe also pursued complaints before the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission. In January 2026, the Commission referred two complaints concerning the Society to a Board of Inquiry. The NSBS sought judicial review of that decision. Referral is not an adjudicated finding of discrimination, and the merits remain contested.
The more enduring public-interest question is procedural: how should an institution identify and correct the possibility that ordinary discretionary decisions, accumulated over time, produce different experiences for different members of a profession?
Read the record, not just the controversy
Readers may reasonably disagree about the implications of Rees’s testimony. The strongest way to evaluate it is to read the actual exchanges, including her qualifications and the panel’s interventions, rather than a list of isolated quotes.
The redacted December 2015 excerpts are available with a transcript-page guide. Additional transcript material referenced in working charts should be published only after it has been matched to the underlying record and clearly identified by date and page.
Read the redacted transcripts and page-numbered guide
Victoria Rees: overview and source collection
Sources
- NSBS v. Lyle Howe, cross-examination of Victoria Rees, December 2015, redacted transcript excerpts, pp. 256–329 and 414–480.
- Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society, Regaining Trust: The Ruck Report (October 29, 2024).
- Regaining Trust implementation project.
- Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society v. Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission and Lyle Howe, Supreme Court of Nova Scotia judicial-review record, Hfx No. 551475, including the Commission’s January 2026 referral letters.
Editorial disclosure: This article summarizes parts of a contested disciplinary and human-rights history. A hearing panel’s professional-discipline findings and the unresolved discrimination allegations are described separately. No individual is said to have committed misconduct or discrimination solely because an allegation was raised in cross-examination.