9 Damning, Disturbing and Disgraceful Quotes From Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms President John Carpay’s Disbarment Report

John Carpay is unethical, unreliable and admits he is a public embarrassment.

These are a few takeaways from a Law Society of Alberta report ordering the disbarment of the president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms following recent hearings.

A three-member law society panel issued a scathing decision this week stripping the JCCF president of his license to practice law over his role in a surveillance operation targeting Manitoba’s chief justice in 2021.

Carpay, also the founder of the legal advocacy charity known for litigating cases on right-wing causes and challenging COVID-19 public health rules, has been in trouble with the law since hiring a private investigator to dig up dirt on a judge presiding over a case that the JCCF was involved in. Jay Cameron, the lawyer who acted for the JCCF on the same case, was also disbarred.

The JCCF was also a central player in the 2022 Freedom Convoy occupation of Ottawa, with one of the charity’s lawyers acting as the convoy’s main spokesperson and later offering to fund criminal defences of convoy participants using tax-deductible charitable donations.

Carpay, who former Alberta premier Jason Kenney once compared to civil rights icon Rosa Parks, admitted to hiring a private eye to follow the judge, but told PressProgress he is upset the law society dragged him through their disciplinary process.

“The Alberta Law Society’s September 2, 2025 decision to disbar John Carpay is a vindictive abuse of process,” Carpay said in a statement to PressProgress.

“Mr. Carpay acknowledged that including a judge in the surveillance was a mistake,” Carpay added, referring to himself in the third-person. “He publicly apologized for his error in judgment in July 2021.”

Carpay explained he was taken aback by the disciplinary hearings because he had already attempted to submit his resignation, but “the Alberta Law Society then refused to accept Mr. Carpay’s resignation, and commenced new disciplinary proceedings against him, regarding the same conduct for which Mr. Carpay had already been disciplined and punished by the Manitoba Law Society.”

Here are a few other takeaways from the panel’s recent report on Carpay’s unprofessional legal conduct:

1. The hearing committee concluded John Carpay has trouble telling the truth:

“We find that Mr. Carpay is an unreliable historian with a convenient memory. As explained above, Mr. Carpay’s viva voce evidence is rife with inconsistencies, gaps, improbabilities, and at least one falsehood.”

2. John Carpay’s testimony was “unreliable”:

“Mr. Carpay’s testimony is inconsistent with the email record and his admissions at the [Law Society of Manitoba] hearing. The emails show that Mr. Cameron suggested a list of people to watch, and that the [Chief Medical Officer] was already under surveillance when Mr. Carpay instructed the PI to watch [Chief Justice Glenn Joyal]. We prefer the indisputable email record and the LSM Decision over Mr. Carpay’s unreliable testimony”

3. John Carpay forgot to tell the law society that he spent a night in jail:

“Mr. Carpay explained that he failed to report to the LSA that he had been charged criminally in Manitoba due to the ‘shock and stress’ of being arrested and gaoled overnight. He did apologize to the LSA for his error and cooperated fully with the LSA after that.”

4. John Carpay’s private eye sent a child to spy on the judge’s daughter:

“Exhibit #15 says that only ‘passive surveillance’ occurred, despite the fact that a boy acting on the PI’s behalf attended the Chief Justice’s house and made contact with Joyal CJ’s daughter.”

5. John Carpay apparently tried, but failed, to conceal information by deleting emails:

“The Deletion of Emails

Mr. Carpay testified that he did not recall instructing Mr. Cameron to tell the PI to both delete all of the correspondence and to not talk to the police, the day after learning that the surveillance had been detected, but he conceded that it was possible that he did give those instructions.

Mr. Carpay did recall being advised by ‘someone’ that ‘there was hacking going on’ when he deleted ‘tens of thousands of e-mails’ sometime after July 13, 2021. He says the deletion is routine, and the timing is coincidental. This Committee did not receive any other evidence regarding JCCF’s email systems being hacked.

The LSM Committee neither accepted nor rejected the claim about a concern over computer hackers ‘While the wholesale purging (and subsequent recovery) of their JCCF Outlook accounts by both Carpay and Cameron may have been justified to shield their content from outside hackers’ …

The fact that the emails were later recovered does not change the facts of the timing of the deletion, and that the deletion is so close in time to instructions Mr. Carpay gave the PI (via Mr. Cameron) to delete the same emails, and to not cooperate with the police. Neither the LSM Committee nor this Committee has been provided any explanation as to how the PI deleting the inculpatory emails would address a hacker issue at JCCF. Nor has there been an attempt to explain how instructing the PI to withhold their cooperation from the police could address a hacker problem.

In our opinion, Mr. Carpay intended to conceal the Lawyers’ involvement in this plot when he deleted those emails and instructed the PI.”

6. John Carpay admits he has embarrassed himself publicly:

“Mr. Carpay testified to the many apologies he has made: to Joyal CJ in the LSM hearing, to the JCCF Board of Directors and colleagues, to friends and family, and to this Committee. He said that he has embarrassed himself as a lawyer, his family, his JCCF colleagues, and the profession.”

7. John Carpay’s behaviour was anti-democratic:

“The Lawyers’ misconduct was an attack on judicial independence. Mr. Carpay may justify his conduct under the rubric of the public’s ‘right to know’, but he is wrong. Judges are not the same as Premiers and Chief Medial Officers (a point he did not seem to fully appreciate, even when asked). An independent judiciary is essential to the rule of law. Whether the lawyer respects the person occupying the judicial office, the lawyer must respect the office.

Individual judges are not exempt from criticism, even from lawyers … A lawyer does not fail to encourage respect for the administration of justice merely by speaking out against the conduct of justice system participants. The question is how they choose to do so … Gathering and publishing embarrassing material involving a public figure is what the tabloids do. When the target is a judge, the conduct is wholly inconsistent with a lawyer’s obligation to the Court, regardless of the lawyer’s opinion about the person occupying the judicial office.

We adopt the LSM Committee’s observation: ‘Judges must have no fear of being subjected to harassment or physical harm … The harassment of one judge is a psychological threat to all judges, and cannot be tolerated in a free and democratic Society’.”

8. John Carpay lacks insight into the implications of his behaviour:

“Mr. Carpay explained in examination-in-chief that the problem with his actions is that Joyal CJ had not yet given his [decision in the case that the JCCF was litigating]; Mr. Carpay explained that he opened the door for people to speculate about using the fruits of the investigation to influence the judge. And, ‘it’s just not appropriate for a lawyer who is involved in the litigation process to be doing surveillance on a judge.’” Notably, Mr. Carpay did not connect his misconduct to the larger concepts of judicial independence or the rule of law. We have not considered his lack of insight as an aggravating factor.”

9. John Carpay believes he has already suffered too much:

“Mr. Carpay said that he has already paid a ‘very heavy price’ with the JCCF Board putting him on a leave of absence for six weeks, the disciplinary process in Manitoba, being punished in Manitoba, facing a criminal prosecution, the peace bond that prohibits practice of law anywhere in Canada, spending 23 hours in gaol, the proceedings in Alberta, and the associated costs; he said that ‘the process is the punishment’.”

Carpay has been ordered to pay Alberta’s law society $7,457.50 in costs.