VANCOUVER — The Law Society of British Columbia says it has become aware of lawyers receiving extortion threats for “substantial sums of money.”

The legal profession regulator sent out a notice to its members that says lawyers have been targeted with threats to their physical safety and it urges victims to contact police.

Conservative member of the legislature Steve Kooner, the Opposition attorney general critic, says in a statement that lawyers being threatened represents a “disturbing escalation” of what he calls the province’s “extortion crisis.”

Kooner says he’s “deeply concerned” that lawyers are being targeted after business owners and families have been dealing with a wave of extortion-related crime, and he is urging the federal government to classify extortion as a terrorism off

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