PING!
Posted on 02/19/2007 12:04:59 PM PST by GMMAC
An artificial scandal
Lorne Gunter, National Post
Published: Monday, February 19, 2007
Before we go any further, let's get straight just exactly what the Harper government has and has not done on the judicial-appointment front. It has not appointed a whole raft of new judges with close ties to the Conservative party -- although you would be forgiven for inferring that from the over-the-top coverage of the controversy, and from the Liberal motion in the House of Commons this week claiming the Conservatives are "failing to act in accordance with the democratic and open values ... by imposing a narrow minded, socially conservative ideology" on the courts.
What the Conservatives have done since November is appoint 33 new members to the 12 judicial advisory councils around the country that inform Ottawa on which lawyers would make acceptable judges. Sixteen of these appointees have or have had some connection to the Conservative party.
That hardly amounts to "stacking the courts," as Liberal MP Michael Ignatieff charged last week. Remember, we're talking merely about appointments to volunteer committees that make recommendations to the justice minister about who might make good members of the bench.
When I pointed this fact out elsewhere last week, I was roundly chastised by a Liberal for failing to understand that "Harper has arranged to make his party's representatives outnumber all other voting members on judicial appointment committees." Well, um, no he hasn't.
There are eight members on each of the 12 committees, for a total of 96 nationwide. Seven have a vote on each potential judicial nominee, while the eighth member --a sitting judge--acts only in case of a tie.
The current federal government appoints up to 36 of the 84 voting members, just as the Liberals did before them. It also selects another 12 from lists of police officers (an innovation introduced by the Conservatives), for a total of 48. The other 36 voting members are selected by provincial and territorial governments, law societies and bar associations.
Now it would be true that the Harper government had conspired to give itself voting control of the advisory committees if all 48 of its direct and indirect appointees (police officers included) were identifiable Conservatives. But despite all the digging by Liberal researchers and their admirers at other outlets, only 16 of 84 voting advisors have Conservative ties. That is hardly a partisan coup.
When the National Post reported Thursday that the Liberals had been every bit as partisan in their own selections (and very likely more so) during the Chretien and Martin eras, the government's critics never wavered. They merely changed their tone a little.
The Tories' appointment of partisans was no longer the problem, we were told. Rather, they had appointed the wrong kind of partisans.
Marlene Jennings, the Liberals' justice critic, claimed the Conservatives had "lowered the bar" with the partisans it had appointed versus the ones her party had picked.
What rubbish. What condescending, self-delusional rubbish.
Even Parker MacCarthy, the president of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA), bemoaned how the Conservatives had undermined the reputation of Canada's judicial selection process through the controversy surrounding their appointees. But since the controversy was started by the Liberals and their media friends, shouldn't Mr. MacCarthy bemoan their actions, rather than those of the Conservatives?
In the wake of the Adscam scandal, it was revealed that of all judges appointed by the Liberals -- not advisory panel members, but judges themselves --nearly two-thirds had personal ties to the governing party. If one added in those from law firms with Liberal connections, the total shot up to nearly three-quarters.
Yet not an official word of concern from the CBA, or the Liberals, or the Grits' media cheerleaders about how that brought the administration of justice into disrepute.
Given the left-leaning predisposition of the legal establishment in Canada over the past 30 years, it is a pretty sure bet that most of the bar association, law-society and judicial members of the advisory committees -- plus many of the provincial representatives -- hew to the left. Add in the Liberals' 36 incumbent appointees, and the committees were cozy little closed shops that could be relied on to pick left-leaning ideological soulmates for the bench.
This should help put in perspective the manufactured outcry over the Conservatives' decision to appoint from their own ranks. Their real crime isn't undermining the courts; it's upsetting the left's clubby little monopoly over the judicial system.
lgunter@shaw.ca
© National Post 2007
PING!
The Canadians sold their souls to the lefties. What are you going to do now?
Scratching head...
I don't understand. Must be that dang Plucky metric system or something...
Canadian liberals even mimic the talking points of their American counterparts.
Huh?
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