PM appeals order to fill judicial vacancies
• The prime minister is appealing a judge’s order that the Liberals fill an “unacceptably high” number of judicial vacancies within a “reasonable time,” saying it vastly exceeds the court’s jurisdiction and created an unwritten “judge-made” rule.
In the appeal filed Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Justice Minister Arif Virani argue the Federal Court “erred in fact and law” when it considered a letter sent by the country’s top judge — Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Richard Wagner — to Trudeau in May outlining the current crisis in Canada’s court system as “expert evidence.” They say the letter is full of “hearsay facts and opinion” and should not be relied upon.
Wagner is also the head of the Canadian Judicial Council, which was created by Parliament in 1971 to “maintain and improve the quality of judicial services in Canada’s superior courts.”
Last month, Federal Court justice Henry S. Brown issued a ruling in which he lambasted the Liberals for “treading water” after being warned that judicial vacancies were exacerbating the resource crisis within the system.
He declined to issue an order compelling the government to fill the nearly 80 vacant spots in short order as requested by the plaintiff, human rights lawyer Yavar Hameed, but instead issued a declaration that Trudeau and Virani must fill current and future vacancies within a “reasonable time.”
Brown’s ruling quoted from the letter sent by Wagner to Trudeau in May in which he denounced the government’s “inability” to fill vacant judge positions in a “timely manner” and noted the situation was “untenable” and bordering a crisis.
The letter cited various statistics to illustrate the problem, such as the fact that as of May 22 per cent of ongoing criminal cases at the Court of King’s Bench in Alberta were passing the 30-month deadline that made them vulnerable to being thrown out.
Brown said that nearly a year after receiving Wagner’s letter, the government had done little to fix the problem.
“Very unfortunately, the Court has no reason to expect the situation will change without judicial intervention. The (Prime Minister and Minister of Justice) filed no evidence to justify why the ‘appalling’, ‘untenable’ and ‘crisis’ situation created by the unacceptably high number of vacancies has not yet been remedied by the Prime Minister, and now by two successive Ministers of Justice,” he wrote.
There are currently 68 judicial vacancies of federally appointed judges, down from 75 in January.