‘Unnecessary fashion statement’

Supreme Court of Canada should not use mink ceremonial robes: activists

OTTAWA — Fur is flying over the Supreme Court of Canada’s ceremonial robes, which are adorned with snow-white mink and often dubbed the judges’ “Santa Claus suits.”

Two animal rights advocates say that the use of the fur is inhumane and out of touch, given that it does not serve a practical or necessary purpose.

The rejection of fur in ceremonial garments has intensified after Queen Elizabeth, a stickler for tradition, announced recently she is moving into modern times and will start wearing fake fur instead of the real thing.

“Fur is the product of immense suffering and is used for a completely unnecessary fashion statement,” says Jenny McQueen, of Animal Rights Toronto, who opposes the Supreme Court’s fur robes.

To her, the fur on the Supreme Court’s robes and other ceremonial attire helps promote the continued normalization of fur.

Jordan Reichert, a member of the Animal Alliance of Canada, shares the sentiment.

He says that one of the many reasons he opposes fur is due to the roughly two-to-three million animals a year that are killed only for their fur. One of the animals that is frequently killed for their fur is mink, the same fur used on the Supreme Court’s robes.

One of the animals that is frequently killed for their fur is mink, the same fur used on the Supreme Court’s robes.

“Objectively the suffering of animals is quite apparent,” says Reichert, who ran in the 2015 federal election for the Animal Protection Party of Canada. “We uphold the opposition to animal cruelty and the suffering of animals within that industry.”

But to abandon fur would be to break with a 700-year tradition, according to Ali Sacha Rezanian, a legal research assistant at the University of Ottawa.

“Canada being a former British colony, we can trace the continuity of these ceremonial robes since at least the 14th century in England,” says Rezanian.

Since then, there have been multiple iterations of the original British robe, although there have been only two versions in Canada’s short history. When the Supreme Court was established in 1875, Canadian justices got their own robes.

From 1979 to 1990, the court started to replace the old robes with the ones worn today. These robes were made by a now-closed tailor in Toronto.

Nowadays, the robes are worn only a handful of times each year.