A lawyer who was indefinitely suspended from practising law last month has been charged with smuggling cannabis into a provincial jail last year.
RCMP say the Manitoba Integrated Law Enforcement Team arrested and charged Chad Sutherland, 43, of smuggling cannabis into Headingley Correctional Centre in March 2025. Officers say he also conspired to possess a restricted firearm.
Mounties say on just over a year ago, on March 30, 2025, correctional officers noticed the smell of cannabis and sought to find out who had taken the drug into the facility.
Chad Sutherland was suspended from practising law and has now been charged with smuggling cannabis into a provincial jail.
About a week later investigators identified Sutherland as a suspect in the case and, after legal proceedings related to an ongoing investigation were concluded earlier this month, officers were able to charge him, a news release issued Tuesday says.
Sutherland remains in custody.
RCMP also arrested two suspects related to Sutherland’s smuggling operation. Hunter Audette, 31, and 41-year-old Krystle Richard were charged last year with two counts of conspiring to commit an indictable offence in connection with the investigation.
Audette remains in custody.
Sutherland was indefinitely suspended and fined $6,000 by the Law Society of Manitoba recently for a raft of infractions, including improperly asking a client for cash, failing to show up to court on several occasions and not responding to the law society while it investigated him.
In April 2025, the law society revoked his practising certificate owing to his failure to comply with conditions it had previously imposed on him.
Two months later, Sutherland encountered a former client on the street and asked her repeatedly for money over two days.
He told her the amount he wanted was a “substantial reduction” from what she owed for work he had done when he was associated with a local law firm.
At the time of the indefinite suspension, the law society’s disciplinary committee said Sutherland’s transgressions, while serious, are not worthy of disbarment.
A former client of Sutherland’s is also suing him and the firm he worked for at the time, Gindin Wiebe Segal Law, for $250,000 for “breach of contract, breach of trust, breach of fiduciary duty, professional negligence and unjust enrichment.”
Sutherland’s former client, Andrew Manning, alleges the lawyer performed no meaningful legal work despite paying him multiple times.
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Sutherland was called to the bar in 2018 in Manitoba and had no previous discipline history with the law society. He’s not a member of any other Canadian law society.
Court records show Sutherland is also charged with assault and mischief for offences alleged to have occurred July 9, 2025, and four subsequent charges of failing to comply with an undertaking and failing to appear in court. He is also charged with assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm for alleged incidents earlier this month.
Sutherland is set to appear in bail court Wednesday.
In 2022 the Bank of Nova Scotia sued Sutherland for repayment of $88,000 in student loans, court documents show. The bank secured a garnishment order against Sutherland who, as of October 2024, still had an outstanding debt of $74,000.
Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer
Nicole Buffie is a reporter for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom as a multimedia producer in 2023. Read more about Nicole.
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