Where are the voices of law and reason in Doug Ford’s cabinet?
Caroline Mulroney vowed to defend the rule of law. Until she didn’t
Be careful what you wish for.
When Caroline Mulroney first announced her candidacy for Ontario’s 2018 election, the future was hers. Back then, she publicly supported official Progressive Conservative policies on an updated sex education curriculum, a carbon tax, and the rule of law. Until she didn’t.
Eclipsed by Doug Ford in this year’s leadership race, she folded on carbon pricing. Still, she stood her ground on sex-ed. Until she didn’t.
When Ford triumphed, he made her attorney general and, thus rewarded, she revised her position on our sex-ed culture wars and the carbon clash with Ottawa. Still, she vowed to defend the rule of law. Until she didn’t.
Now, instead of distinguishing herself as a judicious defender of law and order, she is discrediting herself as the enabler of an injudicious premier. Instead of comporting herself as chief law officer of the crown, she is conflating her role with that of Ford factotum.
Mulroney is not solely responsible for the Ford fiasco, whereby the premier has invoked the “notwithstanding” clause of the Charter of Rights for the first time ever in Ontario. But by virtue of her unique cabinet position, she bears a higher burden to rein in recklessness, to oppose arbitrariness, to advocate for the rule of law.
Consider, for example, the primacy of freedom of association, the principle of non-interference in democratic elections, the practice that judges should be respected and not reviled. Where is the attorney general when Ford flouts legal conventions and lashes out at the judiciary?
When the premier demonizes judges as political appointees who dare not judge him, let alone overrule him — claiming that an elected premier reigns supreme until the next vote, free from judicial scrutiny — does the attorney general not caution him, counter him, or contradict him?
It is a fair question for Mulroney, not just because of her onerous responsibilities as attorney general, but her legacy as the daughter of a consequential prime minister whose name she has surely profited from (conveniently condensing her full name, Caroline Mulroney Lapham, when she entered politics).
As Mulroney acknowledged Wednesday, her father has always denigrated the Charter’s notwithstanding clause, and he did so again unequivocally this week, noting that as PM he “had no interest in using it, no matter what.”
No matter what. Assuredly not for a partisan-motivated brawl with Toronto city council.
When another party elder speaks out — in the person of Bill Davis — does not our attorney general take note? Davis stressed any override of the Charter’s protections was intended as an instrument of last resort. As Davis told TVO’s Steve Paikin: “That it might now be used regularly to assert the dominance of any government or elected politician over the rule of law or the legitimate jurisdiction of our courts of law was never anticipated or agreed to.”
Caroline Mulroney is not alone in her betrayal of the Charter. Other lawyers in the Progressive Conservative caucus, who should also know better, are displaying similar fealty to Ford instead of loyalty to the Constitution — like, for example, Doug Downey, a former treasurer of the Ontario Bar Association; and Deputy Premier Christine Elliott, who has long had a special interest in human rights law.
“Why on Earth would we want to expose ourselves by plunging recklessly into such a controversial issue?” Elliott once said when condemning a proposal that would weaken human rights in Ontario.
That was in 2009, when Elliott warned the PCs against alienating voters by eliminating the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. What does Elliott say now?
What about the other ministers and caucus members who were supposed to act as a check on the untrammelled power of Ford?
In the free vote held Wednesday, not a single member of the PC caucus dared to vote against first reading of the premier’s shameful disruption and destabilization of municipal politics in the middle of an election.
For Mulroney and her fellow Tories at Queen’s Park, their dreams of power have finally been realized. Just not quite the way they first envisioned their wishes coming true.