
Today, ALCCA is proud to announce that Rochelle Direnfeld has joined our organization as its Senior Criminal Counsel and Chair of its Criminal Law Committee. Rochelle served for 32 years as a prosecutor with the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General, including as the Deputy Director of Toronto’s Crown Attorneys. Commencing in 2019, she was a member of the Attorney General’s Hate Crime Working Group, with a deep personal commitment to combatting hate motivated crimes. Indeed, she left retirement in 2023 to rejoin the Working Group until November 2024.
In her new role with ALCCA, she will utilize her expertise in hate crimes and as a former senior prosecutor to advocate on behalf of community members victimized by hate, and to educate and train police, prosecutors, the community and governments on the criminal law tools available to combat antisemitism and all forms of hatred.
Rochelle joins a growing cadre of volunteer ALCCA senior criminal lawyers, led by ALCCA’s Chair, Mark Sandler, recognized as one of Canada’s leading criminal lawyers and preeminent experts on the use of criminal law to combat hatred. Sandler has lectured and written extensively on hate crimes, provided training to police and prosecutors since 1985, testified before House of Commons and Senate Committees and appeared as counsel before the Supreme Court of Canada on multiple occasions on issues relating to hate crimes.
ALCCA’s criminal lawyers will continue to work, in partnership with other community organizations, to:
Educate community members, law enforcement, and government on the legal tools available to address criminal extremism, hate speech and other hate activities prohibited under existing criminal law
Initiate a “train the trainers” program (already designed) to expand the number of lawyers who can offer training and education on hate crimes across the country
Triage allegations of criminal hate activities and bring appropriate cases to the attention of the authorities, together with available evidence
Advocate for legislative change where necessary
Appear before Committees at all levels of government and at other venues to address deficiencies in existing policies, practices or enforcement
Serve as criminal complainants or private prosecutors where appropriate
Provide support or referrals for those victimized by hate
Publish research pieces on issues relating to hate crimes and extremist activities
Much of this work is already well underway.
In their advocacy work, ALCCA’s criminal lawyers will be guided by several principles:
1. The criminal law already provides significant tools to address hate motivated crimes. These tools are being underutilized in a number of jurisdictions.
2. Although most of the criminal lawyers’ work has focussed on antisemitic hate crimes, given its prominence in all analysis of hate activity in Canada, ALCCA’s criminal lawyers oppose hate crimes against any affected community members and their training and education, including case scenario training, extends to hate crimes against all identifiable groups under the Criminal Code.
3. ALCCA’s criminal lawyers recognize that not all offensive conduct rises to the level of criminality, and respect the importance of freedom of speech and assembly. Their training and education differentiates between protected speech and hate speech, while addressing efforts to immunize even the most vile forms of hate speech from accountability through distortion of the meaning of fundamental freedoms.
4. They also recognize that use of hate speech laws should generally be reserved for extremists, and that education and respectful dialogue will often represent better alternatives to address ignorance, misinformation and biases.
ALCCA will continue to recruit volunteer senior criminal lawyers from across Canada to ensure this work is being done wherever it is needed.