PING!
Posted on 02/16/2007 10:30:42 AM PST by GMMAC
Liberals have stacked courts for years
So their latest criticisms over Conservative committee appointments is bizarre
Lorne Gunter, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Friday, February 16, 2007
You've got to hand it to the federal Liberals. Not even defeat chastens them.
In power or out, they still maintain that everything they do is objective, pure, enlightened, and altruistic.
The most recent example: accusations that the Conservative government is politicizing the appointment of judges, whereas they never did.
This would be rubbish whether the Liberals believed their own accusations or not. But it would less ridiculous if they saw through their own histrionics as nothing more than an act designed to erode voter support for the Tories. At least then they could be admired for having hit on a clever strategy.
Instead, they really seem to believe their own bumph that they only ever approached the judicial system with the noblest of intentions. And that exposes them as delusional, smug and naive in equal measure.
On Thursday, Liberal MP Michael Ignatieff introduced a motion in the House of Commons claiming "the government is failing to act in accordance with the democratic and open values expected of its office by imposing a narrow minded, socially conservative ideology as reflected in its approach to the judicial appointment process to dramatically increase the influence of right-wing ideology in the judiciary."
Ignatieff told the National Post the Conservatives were engaging in "a deliberate attempt" to "stack" the courts.
In the last election -- in language far less confrontational than Ignatieff's -- Stephen Harper said Canadians need not fear his party making any really radical right-wing reforms if elected because the liberal courts would prevent the Conservatives from going too far.
Remember the outrage that greeted those remarks, both from the Liberals and the media?
The Globe and Mail for instance, called it a "pernicious view" and inferred that Harper had a McCarthy-like tendency to see "Liberals under every federal bed."
The Supreme Court, the paper contended, was "remarkable for its evenhandedness," and no Conservative prime minister should ruin the rule of law in Canada by seeking to appoint ideologues to the bench.
So where is the similar outrage at Ignatieff's charges?
The plain truth is, there will not be any.
LIBERAL ALLIES HEAD TO BENCH
The outrage from outlets such as the Globe is all still directed at Harper, because the Conservatives' critics genuinely seem to believe that under the Liberals only our finest legal minds were appointed to the bench with the taint of partisanship or ideology.
But recall the Liberals' record of judicial appointments.
Just under two years ago, Benoit Corbeil, former executive director of the Liberals' Quebec wing, testified before the Gomery inquiry that "eight or 10" of the 20 lawyers who worked on the Liberals Quebec campaign in the 2000 federal election had been appointed to the bench in the four years that followed.
This prompted the Montreal Gazette to investigate all federal judicial appoints in the province after 2000.
The paper discovered 60 per cent of new judges had campaigned for, donated to or run on behalf of the Liberals in the five years before their appointments.
If only those lawyers appointed from private practice (rather than those taken from academia or the civil service) were considered, 72 per cent were openly Liberal.
The Gazette's investigation prompted a similar one by the Ottawa Citizen of appointees in Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Nearly two-thirds of new judges in those provinces, too, had had close ties with the Liberals prior to their appointments. Almost no supporters of any other parties were made judges.
In Alberta, almost no Conservatives were made federal judges while the Liberals were in office in Ottawa.
However, Marsha Colleen Erb, a Liberal fundraiser and Bryan Mahoney, a two-time failed Liberal candidate, were both appointed to the Court of Queen's Bench in 2001.
Vital Ouellette, who ran unsuccessfully for the Liberals in two provincial elections, was appointed in 2002, and John Gill, co-chair of the Liberals campaign committee in the province was made a supernumerary judge in 2005.
And the funny thing is, while the Liberals and the Globe and others have failed even to acknowledge the role politics played in judicial appointments under the Chretien and Martin governments, they are accusing the Conservatives of "contaminating" and "perverting" the process when all the Conservatives have done so far is appoint some like-minded people to the committees that vet potential judicial nominees.
All the recent hue and cry about threats to judicial independence is not over some spate of Conservatives being made judges.
It is the result of the federal government having appointed 16 Conservatives (out of 96 total members) to the 12 volunteer judicial advisory committees across the country. They are not judges, only members of committees who advice Ottawa on which lawyers might make good judges.
Yet even that is too much for our country's liberal establishment.
For more than a decade, they have had the judiciary entirely to themselves. They have come to see this as the objective norm. So even a tiny dent in their monopoly on the courts they now portray as a attack by the Conservatives on the very foundations of our society.
Apparently only Liberals can be trusted to make judicial recommendations.
It's head-shakingly silly, really.
© The Edmonton Journal
PING!
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
The photo could just as easily be labeled "Supreme Non-accountability", "Supreme Arrogance" or "Ottawa Chapter: Friends of Perversion".
It seems to me that Liberals regard stacking the court benches and judicial activism as the way to achieve what cannot be achieved by the democratic process. They then rationalize that this method is legitimate by assuming that they, the Liberals, are morally superior to the mob and therefore have every right to impose their will on the majority. It is a foolish assumption that ultimately undermines faith in the judicial process. Little wonder that Canada is held up as an example of why other nations should not adopt a bill of rights as it transfers power from the parliament to the judiciary. What the Liberals fail to realise is that many others do not see them or their ideas as morally superior or desirable.
Yet even that is too much for our country's liberal establishment.
This makes sense.
It is the Chinese year of the pig, so we should expect some squealing.
All the better. The longer the liberal socilaists keep it up, the longer the Conservatives shall reign.
Give them bells and beards, and they could be Santa Clauses in any part of the Western world.
Would you sit on their laps?
All I want for Christmas is a justice in a black gown.
"Supreme Non-accountability", ...
8-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.