Specifics emerge in top court rift
Judge’s exit will open second Quebec vacancy
Friday’s confirmation that Quebec Justice Louis LeBel will step down from the Supreme Court of Canada in November came just as the Conservative government was hit with explosive new allegations about how it handled its attempts to fill another Quebec seat on the court.
The Globe and Mail reported that at the time Prime Minister Stephen Harper nominated Marc Nadon to fill a Quebec position last year, four of the six judges on his short list were members of the Federal Court.
The Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that members of the Federal Court are ineligible to sit on the top court as Quebec representatives. Because of this, it rejected Nadon.
Soon after that ruling, a public spat broke out between Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Harper over whether she tried to offer advice on the court appointments.
The Conservative government has been engaged in an unprecedented public squabble with McLachlin, suggesting she acted inappropriately by trying to call Harper to discuss the nomination process for the eligibility of a Federal Court judge on the top court, when a case on the matter could go before the court.
However, the Globe reported that McLachlin was so troubled that the Conservative government’s list included four of six candidates from the Federal Court that she phoned Justice Minister Peter MacKay and took steps to contact the prime minister to highlight the question of their eligibility.
A multi-party parliamentary committee dominated by Conservatives trimmed the list of six candidates down to a short list of three, including Nadon, who was ultimately nominated by Harper.
The Supreme Court Act requires that nominees for one of Quebec’s three seats on the high court be either a member of the provincial bar, a member of the province’s Superior Court or a judge on the Quebec Court of Appeal. In its March ruling, the top court said Nadon, a Federal Court of Appeal judge, did not qualify because he was not a current member of any of those three bodies.
The federal government has promised to nominate another Quebec judge very soon to fill the spot left vacant when Nadon’s appointment was nullified.
The government was trying to use the selection process to find a more conservative judge than would have otherwise been available in Quebec, the Globe reported.
Liberal justice critic Sean Casey said the revelations Friday reduced his trust level to “zero” that the process to fill the one vacant seat and soon-to-be vacant seat in Quebec won’t be skewed again.
“There’s absolutely no limit to how thorough they (the Conservatives) will be to find someone who is ideologically aligned to them,” Casey said in a telephone interview.
Amid the alarm Friday, LeBel wrote to federal Justice Minister Peter MacKay to officially notify the government he will retire from the top court on Nov. 30, 2014, when he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 75.
“Plans to fill the resulting vacancy on the Supreme Court of Canada will be announced in due course,” Harper said in a statement thanking LeBel for his service.
His office declined to comment on the other names reportedly on his original shortlist. “We don’t comment on rumours and will respect the confidentiality of the process,” Harper’s press secretary, Carl Vallée, said in an email.