Carly Fidler was a first-year associate at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP in 2012 when she was asked to assist with a pro bono matter representing Kids Help Phone (KHP) acting as an intervener at the Supreme Court of Canada. Considered a milestone case in the balancing of the open courts principle and a free press with the privacy interests of young people at the time, A.B. v. Bragg Communications Inc. was the first cyberbullying case brought before Canada’s top court.
Not only did the SCC grant KHP’s application to intervene but it also allowed the charity to make oral submissions.
“In that case there were so many interveners involved the Court only granted time for oral argument to some and we were one of them,” recalls Carly. “It was the first time I had ever worn my robes. I devoted a lot of time to the case, and no one at the firm ever limited the hours I spent on the case. It was a great opportunity.”
The representation for KHP was led by now SCC Justice Mahmud Jamal, who at the time was a litigation partner at Osler, along with Steven Golick, then Chair of Osler’s Restructuring and Insolvency practice and one of the founders of KHP.
“Mahmud was a huge proponent of pro bono work in general and both facilitated my involvement and supported my commitment to this case,” says Carly. “I will never forget it. It was a room full of advocates from all over the country representing important, interested organizations including the CCLA, Unicef, Canadian Association of Journalists, the Privacy Commissioner — all in one room, all in pursuit of the right answer. It set the foundation for my career as an advocate. I have since sought out pro bono opportunities because my career began on that experience. It was one of the most impactful experiences I have had as a litigator so far.”
The SCC ultimately held that taking into account the objectively discernable harm to a young person impacted by cyberbullying of having to publicly disclose their identity, the appellant was entitled to remain anonymous as her case proceeded through the court system. The written submission provided by Osler was the only one to be cited in the Court’s decision.
Osler’s deep ties to Kids Help Phone
Steven Golick’s connection to KHP began in his third year of practise in 1988 when, during a dinner party with friends, the idea to develop KHP began to take shape. A colleague of Steven’s worked for the Canadian Children's Foundation which had just completed fundraising for the Ontario Institute for Child Abuse and was looking for their next project, recalls Steven, now retired from Osler. He has volunteered his time to the charity for 30 years as counsel, board member, member of the executive committee, secretary and various other roles. In 2002 he was awarded National Volunteer of the Year, in 2012 the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal for “remarkable commitment to the mental health and well-being of children and youth in Canada” and in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the community, and the influence he has had on the kids, teens and young adults across Canada, and in 2017 received a Lifetime Achievement Award from KHP for his outstanding contribution to the organization.
“This small group of visionaries had come up with the idea of creating a free anonymous help line for kids staffed 24/7 by paid professional counsellors. There was no national service like it for kids in Canada and no models globally” recalls Steven. “There was a U.K. national helpline staffed by volunteers but nothing like what we really wanted to achieve.”
Using space provided by a client, Steven and the founding members launched the service, and the first call was answered in May 1989. KHP started with 10 phone lines operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Today, KHP is Canada’s only 24/7 e-mental health service for young people offering bilingual support for through phone, text, live chat or self-directed resources on kidshelpphone.ca. This spring KHP launched support in over 100 languages via interpreter through phone counselling. Since 2020 KHP has supported nearly 15 million interactions with young people, this number grows every single day.
Osler’s Community Law Committee joins the cause
Over time, Steven realized KHP would need more legal resources than he could provide as a young lawyer, so he went to Osler’s Community Law Committee and asked for KHP to be accepted to the program. From the beginning, the arrangement was that Osler would provide legal services free of charge, invoicing for disbursements only. If something becomes litigious it gets reviewed separately by the committee.
Over the years the firm has represented KHP in labour and employment matters, leasing issues, corporate and commercial matters, and intellectual property and trade issues as well as other more complex corporate needs.
Diana Holloway, an associate in the Employment and Labour practice at Osler has worked extensively on pro bono matters for KHP on employment agreements, union negotiations, workplace policies and HR compliance issues.
“They are a group of people who are compassionate and caring and the work we do for them often involves novel legal issues,” she says. “It’s nice to help a good cause that must conserve its resources but are doing really good work.”
Similarly, Francois Laurin-Pratte, an associate in the litigation group of the Montreal office also worked on employment law matters for KHP early in his career at Osler.
“The firm encourages us to treat the work as any other case and the time counts as our billable hours. The work is rewarding. The people I have worked with at KHP are doing their best to help young people. To take the burden of litigation away so they can focus on the good they do is so important,” he says.
Tracy Sandler, a partner in Osler’s Restructuring and Insolvency practice recalls becoming involved with KHP in her earliest days as a lawyer at Osler.
“As with the firm generally, our group was very supportive of young lawyers becoming involved in pro bono matters. Steven was a mentor and his passion for the organization was effusive,” she says. “I was an articling student in 1991 and rotating through the restructuring group. In addition to tasks he was giving me as part of my restructuring rotation, he asked me to take on general corporate commercial work related to KHP. He would bring me to Kids Help Phone meetings. What really hooked me was the founders’ excitement for the project.”
In 1995 when her son was born, she went on maternity leave and the only work she did during her mat leave related to KHP projects.
“It was such worthwhile work and I enjoyed supporting the organization during that time,” she recalls.
A few years ago, she joined the KHP board as well as the board’s governance committee and is now chairing a governance task force considering a reorganization of KHP’s corporate structure, work she has found to be incredibly rewarding.
Funding a cause with growing demand
Today, funding for the organization comes from a mix of corporate partnerships, philanthropy and community engagement. In the early years, however, there were lean times when it was often uncertain whether KHP would continue.
“We had to cut back several times in the first few years because we didn’t have enough money to keep the lights on, let alone the phone lines going,” says Steven. “We had a small initial government grant but decided early on that we didn’t want to be relying on government funding because governments and mandates change. It was all private money in the early days.”
From the very beginning, major corporate donors were brought on board to support KHP.
“We went to potential sponsors and said, ‘You can put our logo and phone number on your packaging, if you donate a certain amount annually,” says Steven. “This helped the corporate sponsors strengthen their brands to be seen as good corporate citizens helping children while making our phone number easily accessible.”
Other early challenges occurred around call wait times and dropped calls. “We knew the wait time was sometimes as much as four or five minutes, but that’s a horribly long time when a child is being threatened or crying because someone is attacking their mother,” he says. “There is nothing more horrendous than when a child is in distress and has nowhere to turn.”
By leveraging cause-related marketing as well as fundraising dinners and golf tournaments, KHP eventually found steady sources of funding. Steven recalls one year when at a fundraising dinner he discovered the true KHP impact even among the young Osler lawyers sitting at his table. Every year KHP held an annual dinner and Osler always bought a table. Steven often offered tickets to clients but one year invited some junior lawyers and as he sat down, he realized he didn’t really know everyone. As he asked each one about themselves and why they were there that night he discovered that of the nine other people around the table six said they or their best friend had called KHP at one time and it had changed their life.
“I just started to cry,” Steven recalls. “We had only been operating for 10 years. There in front of me was a whole generation of people who ended up excelling because a professional counselor was there to listen and help guide them. That told me we were making a difference.”
Of the many anecdotes that Steven has heard about how KHP has helped kids, he recalls one in which a teenager called from a pay phone in Vancouver and told a counsellor she was afraid. She had run away from her home in eastern Canada but wanted to go home.
“KHP has an extensive database of agencies that are available to assist if the caller is willing to give up anonymity. While the caller remained on the phone, the counselor arranged to have an agency pick her up, take her to the airport, and pay for a plane ticket so she could fly home to the Maritimes. They also found another agency to pick her up when her flight landed and drive her home. If that’s the only story I heard in all the years, it would have been enough. We saved a life,” says Steven. “This is what we are supposed to do.”
While there are many corporate sponsors, KHP started with five anchor partners including BMO, Bell, Nestle, Parmalat and Osler. It has created a solid foundation for the organization to help kids across the country.
“My experience with this relationship is like no other I’ve had with any legal counsel,” says Katherine Hay, President and CEO of KHP. “There are people from across the firm who just say, ‘How can we help?’ These are busy people who drop everything when I have a question. I often wonder how we would have gotten here without the horsepower of all the people at Osler.”
While KHP has occasionally used other firms for legal help over the years, it is usually by referral from Osler. The organization also just recently hired their own in-house counsel, Jamie Yoon, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary.
“It was time for us to have in-house counsel who can work with our partners where it makes sense,” says Katherine. “We have grown substantially, and we have considerable need to make sure our contracts, privacy and partnerships around technology and innovation are sound.”
Lifesaving changing technology solutions
When KHP brought in its crisis texting service four years ago it meant negotiating a complex contract with a U.S. company for use of technology no other service in Canada was using at the time. The technology involved using AI machine learning to assist in triaging client calls in the sphere of online mental health. It was game changing for KHP and the kids it would serve.
“We didn’t have the expertise,” says Katherine. “The work that Osler did to help us set up that contract was incredible.”
Today, KHP does 10-15 active suicide rescues every day based off that texting service.
“It gets right to the core of saving lives and every day we have another 700 conversations that also impact lives differently because of that service,” says Katherine.
And then a year ago, the same technology provider experienced a highly publicized scandal involving how they were using their data.
“We were able to prove that the contracts put in place by Osler protected KHP during queries by the privacy commission based on how our counterparts in the U.S. use data. The result showed how KHP treated its data was vastly different from how the U.S. did. That’s an example of having an incredible partner who happens to be a founding partner and the best legal firm in Canada doing the work for us stood up against some tough scrutiny,” says Katherine.
The work Kids Help Phone originally did with the U.S. texting service and using AI and machine learning was so sound that it remains keeping KHP at the forefront youth mental health and responsible AI use in Canada.
COVID’s impact on Canada’s youth mental health crisis
When COVID restrictions began in March of 2020 and the world shut down, the investment in technology KHP had made meant it was ready to scale up at a time when Canadian children and youth needed them the most.
During the pandemic, KHP went from managing 1.9 million interactions from across Canada in 2019 — which was a record year — to over 15 million interactions, either by text, calls, or other means of communication since March 2020.
“Those are staggering numbers but those are over 15 million points of courage for young people,” says Katherine.
In that time, KHP also doubled the size of its clinical staff — 430 clinical staff now work for KHP compared to 170 before COVID.
“In that time, we required a lot of legal advice and support from Osler as we were expanding so much and so fast,” she says.
The technology Osler helped KHP put in place ahead of the pandemic enabled KHP to manage that spike in outreach.
What KHP delt with during and even before the pandemic is reflective of a grim reality which is that Canada has the third largest youth suicide rate in the industrial world and suicide remains the second leading cause of death for young people. According to KHP:
- clients are young people as young as five years of age
- 70% of kids tell KHP counsellors something they have never told anybody else before
- 80% of kids say they feel better after a call with KHP
- clients call about anxiety, depression, grief, loss, suicide, self-harm, and abuse
The average wait time these days is five minutes, and the quality scores are higher than 90% which is better than they have ever been.
To help support the demand it has and to move forward to manage the extreme need, KHP is currently running Canada’s largest movement for youth mental health, Feel Out Loud, a $300 million campaign to support young people from coast to coast to coast.
“There was a youth mental health crisis in Canada before COVID,” says Katherine. “When we imagined this movement, it was to unlock hope and change the dialogue around mental health for youth in Canada so that kids can thrive.”
For Steven, while he largely retired from activities related to KHP in 2017, his desire to see the organization continue to grow and help Canada’s children remains as strong as it did in 1989.
“I am passionate about this issue of protecting and helping the segment of our society that is least able to help themselves. They are our future. There is nothing more important than our kids who are the least protected in our society and most in need of help,” says Steven. “Too often they have nowhere to turn and if we can’t help them, we are not a fair and just society.”
Osler’s legacy of helping KHP will continue with lawyers from across the firm eager to sign on to help the cause that helps so many children and youth across Canada.