The events in April to July 2013 demonstrate the usual and respectful relationship between the judicial branch and the other two branches of government. In April 2013, the Chief Justice, quite properly and according to long-standing tradition, provided her input to the appropriate parliamentary committee about proposed new appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada. In July, she provided her input to the Canadian government. These discussions occurred well before the nomination of Justice Marc Nadon. They were perfectly in line with the sort of courteous discussions which have historically occurred and which Canadians would expect to occur between the judiciary and the executive with respect to judicial appointments.
In contrast, the recent statements by the Prime Minister were made nine months after the conversations in question occurred, long after the Prime Minister could have dealt with any aspect of those discussions if there had been any good-faith reason to do so. The Prime Minister’s statements were made only after the government had been a litigant in appeals before the Supreme Canada, leaving the impression that the statements were aimed at the Court as a reaction to the result of the decisions in those appeals -- conduct in which no respectful private litigant should engage.
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... which, in fairness to Coyne, has been mostly disgusting.
Oh I agree completely. What gets Coyne going, in some cases to near rage, are not the policies but the behaviour. He is a stickler for doing things the right way and following the rules/precedents, something the Harper gang seems to have a hard time doing.
So, perhaps McLachlin did have an open mind about a difficult and ambiguous issue of eligibility at the time she “flagged” it to the government. But if that was so, her subsequent portrayal of the answer to this question as “unambiguous” seems a disingenuous exaggeration — just as merely flagging a question that has an unambiguous answer seems a disingenuous evasion.
Might it be that the Prime Minister is not the only one playing political games?
Might be taken with a grain of salt - PoliSci profs, not lawyers.
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Rainer Knopff is a professor in the Department of Political Science and the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. Dennis Baker is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Guelph.
The Faculty of Law Council at the University of Calgary joins with the Canadian Council of Law Deans and members of the legal community across Canada in expressing its grave concern with respect to statements made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Minister of Justice Peter MacKay, suggesting that Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin engaged in improper conduct in the context of the appointment of Mr. Justice Marc Nadon to the Supreme Court of Canada.
On the contrary, the facts confirm that the Chief Justice’s actions were consistent with the duties of her office, responsible, and beyond criticism. To suggest that the Chief Justice in performing her administrative role was inappropriately lobbying is to endanger one of the most important aspects of Canadian constitutional democracy, that being the relationship of respect between the independent judicial and executive arms of our government.
Anyway, Justin Trudeau has nice hair so don't vote for him.
Looks like Harper took the eligibility concerns seriously:
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The Prime Minister’s Office warned Justice Marc Nadon of a potential problem with his Supreme Court appointment and suggested he resign and join the Quebec bar to ensure eligibility, sources say. ...
The suggestion came after Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin says she contacted Justice Minister Peter MacKay last July 31 to flag the issue of nominating a federal court judge to fill a Quebec seat on the high court. It was a call Prime Minister Stephen Harper later deemed “inappropriate” – setting off a skirmish between the Conservatives and the high court that has dominated Ottawa this past week.
The revelation now suggests the government knew the risks in appointing Nadon to the high court before it sought outside opinions, and came up with a way to avoid a potential conflict with the law. Nadon, evidently, refused to go along with the plan. His appointment was subsequently challenged as unconstitutional and struck down by the high court in a 6 to 1 ruling.
PMO won't comment. MacKay just says it wasn't he who suggested it.
Quote:
Justice Minister Peter MacKay says he did not tell Justice Marc Nadon to resign and join the Quebec bar to ensure his appointment to the Supreme Court. But he didn’t deny that someone – possibly from the Prime Minister’s Office – did. ... “That was not a request that was made by me,” MacKay told a justice committee on Parliament Hill. “That’s not something that I personally encouraged him to do.”
MacKay did not deny that the PMO warned Nadon of a potential problem with his Supreme Court appointment. A spokesman for the prime minister’s office did not return Global News requests for comment.
Makes you wonder why Harper was so keen on appointing him.
Because it was his pick, his guy.
I can't remember who said it in the at issue panel quoted above, Coyne or Hebert, but it really comes across as he picked his guy, and despite everyone saying no, tried to force his pick in there. Or, as the at issue panel put it, it really comes across as - and I hate to say this - but almost someone having a tantrum that they can't get their way.
PMO won't comment. MacKay just says it wasn't he who suggested it.
This boggles my mind and makes me wonder how much longer Harper's MP's will just stand around and watch this dumpster fire. I'd like to think people like MacKay a former crown prosecutor would take more of a principled stance on an issue like this rather than just mindlessly wave the party flag.
This boggles my mind and makes me wonder how much longer Harper's MP's will just stand around and watch this dumpster fire. I'd like to think people like MacKay a former crown prosecutor would take more of a principled stance on an issue like this rather than just mindlessly wave the party flag.
LOL at the idea of Peter MacKay taking a principled stand on anything.
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LOL at the idea of Peter MacKay taking a principled stand on anything.
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Originally Posted by Zulu29
Yeah I was grasping at straws there
I don't really understand why so many of you hold Peter Mackay in such disdain?
Is there anybody in the CPC party that you hold in high regard?.... other than the dead ones that is, and frankly he didn't receive a lot of praise from a lot of you when he was alive either.
I don't really understand why so many of you hold Peter Mackay in such disdain?
Is there anybody in the CPC party that you hold in high regard?.... other than the dead ones that is, and frankly he didn't receive a lot of praise from a lot of you when he was alive either.
I don't particularly care for Jason Kenny's politics, but he seems like a decent enough guy. I don't hold any disdain for Peter MacKay, but the man isn't exactly a beacon of principled resilience.
I don't really understand why so many of you hold Peter Mackay in such disdain?
Is there anybody in the CPC party that you hold in high regard?.... other than the dead ones that is, and frankly he didn't receive a lot of praise from a lot of you when he was alive either.
Who will Prime Minister Quixote attack next? Where is the next windmill? I wish Harper had a taping system in his office ala Nixon, it would be epic to hear what he how he comes to make these type of baseless attacks on people on almost a bi-weekly basis.
This explains why Harper was so keen to appoint Nadon:
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When the federal government tapped Federal Court Judge Marc Nadon to fill a Quebec seat on the Supreme Court, the argument was that he was a more traditional jurist, one whose judgments reflected greater deference to Parliament.
But there's another way to look at it, based on a view shared by Stephen Harper and others in his inner circle, that judges on Quebec's senior courts are too liberal and far too activist in applying the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as a check on the power of elected officials.
"I think he regards it as a little bit of an adversarial bench,'' says retired Quebec Superior Court judge John Gomery, who chaired the inquiry into the Liberal sponsorship scandal. In an interview with CBC Radio's The House, Gomery says the Harper government perceives Quebec as more to the left of centre than any other province. "And that, I think, makes Mr. Harper uneasy about Quebec judges because they come from that culture and that milieu, and are representative of that opinion.''
That view is not universal in the government's ranks, of course, but some senior Conservatives sources have privately expressed a similar opinion. That, at least, helps explain why the Harper government went to such lengths to push Nadon as the first Federal Court judge to represent Quebec on the country's highest court. ...
Except it's now clear his government is unwilling and unable to just move on. Unwilling, because Harper and MacKay still haven't explained why they felt compelled to publicly rebuke McLachlin for phone calls that happened last July — months before Nadon was appointed. Unable, because the Quebec seat Nadon was supposed to fill on the country's highest court remains vacant, with another opening coming later this year when Justice Louis LeBel reaches the mandatory retirement age of 75.
MacKay told the Commons that he's spoken with his Quebec counterpart this week, and he intends to come forward with a new name for the Supreme Court very soon.
The easiest thing would be to select one of the other two candidates from the same short list that included Nadon. But the scuttlebutt is that one of those other candidates is also a judge on the Federal Court of Appeal; the other is said to be a Quebec Court of Appeal judge who wasn't the Conservatives choice then, and may not be now.
Harper has clearly signalled he wants a more conservative judge on the bench. With one failed attempt under his belt, he may already have lost his case.
