Judicial integrity at risk with Ford, Downey scheme
Every politician dreams of leaving a lasting legacy. Ontario Attorney General Ian Scott is one of the few to actually do so in an era where the role of the attorney general actually meant something more than being the premier’s lackey.
By pioneering a system that largely eliminated the taint of politics and patronage from Ontario’s method of appointing judges and justices of the peace, Scott delivered an enviable model for other jurisdictions in Canada and abroad. He was proud of it, and justly so. The appointment process he brought into law ensured that only properly vetted, qualified and diverse applicants would be appointed judges.
Having spent countless hours in the courtroom, Scott understood that, while most political decisions are fleeting, a judicial appointee could easily serve for 20 or 30 years and render tens of thousands of decisions. With security of tenure, they will sit long after the politicians who appointed them are gone and forgotten.
The Judicial Appointment Advisory Council process led to a remarkable transformation of the provincial court bench. With equity and gender balance as part of its mandate, JAAC put forward one sterling list of candidates after another. Once broadly perceived as being weak, the calibre of the judges presiding over approximately 95 per cent of all criminal cases in the province grew by leaps and bounds.
Fast-forward three decades. Typifying their populist hunger for ultimate power and control, Premier Doug Ford and
Attorney General Doug Downey have signalled their intent to gut the Judicial Advisory and Appointments Committee process. In its place, they would reinstate a discredited process that hearkens back to a time when judicial appointments were handed out like loyalty prizes to cronies and ideological fellow travellers.
It is essential that the public and the legal community responds to this farcical approach with a firm “no.”
The genius of the JAAC procedure lies in its broad membership, its autonomy and its deep capacity for research. Composed of top lawyers, judges and members of the public, the committee vets applicants to the provincial court bench through in-person interviews and careful probing of their backgrounds, ethics and legal acumen.
It is onto this stage that Attorney General Downey and Premier Ford have come stomping in their hobnail boots. Their aim is the untrammelled power to appoint whomever they wish for plum judicial positions.
Already, they have refused to choose from three lists of highly qualified judicial candidates vetted by the committee and instead demanded more names. In doing so, judicial vacancies have not been filled. An already glacial court system is being further hampered.
The model the Ford government perceives as being preferential would feature a paper review by a vetting committee in lieu of a comprehensive in-person interview. The committee would then be responsible for designating each candidate simply as “qualified” or “unqualified.” From the vast bin of “qualified” candidates — or even the unqualified bin, if it so wishes — the government could select a judge.
Perversely the claim is being made that this will improve the diversity and quality of appointments — what nonsense.
Any notion that this plan would result in a pool of better or more-diverse judges is flat-out delusional.
The conceit that a politician’s wisdom can supplant that of a diverse, highly experienced committee of judges, lawyers and public representatives is counterintuitive. The current system is already guaranteed to produce a list of top jurists.
The Downey preference would produce judges who benefit from a close connection to the government of the day.
This is Patronage 101, mirroring a system that has long been employed for federal judicial appointments, yet is gradually undergoing needed reform.
Thus far in its tenure, one dynamic alone has forced the Ford government to apply the brakes to foolhardy and hasty plans — public outrage.
It was this sort of backlash that forced the province to back away from its indiscriminate budget-cutting and tone-deaf treatment of groups such as teachers and autistic children. The same anger must now be directed in full force at the government’s plan to destroy one of the greatest legal advances this province has pioneered.