ne Cheer for Supreme Court Reform

   

    

Right Hook
JJ McCullough, OP Columnist

 

George W. Bush had to wait four long years before he got
the chance to appoint someone to the United States
Supreme Court. Though he’s been lucky enough in the last
few months to receive a double vacancy and install two
new judges, overall, it was still a long and grueling wait for
an already rare political opportunity.

In Canada, by contrast, Prime Minister Harper was
barely in power a week before he got his chance to make a
pick for the nation’s top court. Justice Jon Major, who was
originally appointed by Brian Mulroney back in 1992,
announced his intention to resign shortly before the recent
winter election, and in doing so automatically ensured the
new Prime Minister would receive a very nice inauguration
gift. While the American media gave much coverage to
Bush’s two recent Supreme Court nominees, and focused
heavily on analyzing their likes and dislikes, agendas and
ideologies, what’s interesting about the Canadian coverage
of Harper’s picks is that the focus tends to be much more
on /ow he chooses someone rather than who he ends up
choosing,

The Canadian system of Supreme Court appointment
has remained virtually unchanged since confederation. To
explain the process in strictly constitutional terms, the PM
essentially picks the person he wants. In the States, by con-
trast, all of the President’s nominees must be screened by
the Senate’s judiciary committee, followed by a collective
vote of the Senate itself. Both groups have the power of

veto.

The contrast between the systems of the two nations
has not gone unnoticed.

For many years, there has been a strong populist oppo-
sition to the Canadian method of appointment—a case
that was eagerly embraced by the former Reform and
Alliance parties. Now that the former co-founder of the
Reform Party is finally sitting in the Prime Minister’s chair,
there has been tremendous grassroots pressure for him to
live up to his past rhetoric and implement some meaning-
ful change regarding how the nation’s high court justices
are chosen.

His solution was revealed last week, and like much of
what Harper has been doing lately, the end result reeked of
heavy compromise.

The Prime Minister will still appoint a nominee as
usual, but before he or she can take office, the judge will
undergo a three-hour televised, public scrutiny by an
appointed judicial committee consisting of Members of
Parliament from all four parties. While the move is unques-
tionably ground-breaking by Canadian standards, it remains
relatively thin gruel overall for those who wished to see
greater democratic accountability for the high court’s
appointment process. The panel will not, after all, hold
veto power—they won’t even be permitted to formally
state an opinion—and its members will be hand-picked by
the Prime Minister’s office.

Why Harpet’s reform proposal is so noticeably half-
assed remains unclear.

The Prime Minister has personally been a longstanding
opponent of judicial activism, and is no doubt well-aware
of the positive checks and balances that can be gained
from having the collective House of Commons veto prime
ministerial nominees. The most obvious explanation for
the cop-out is that Harper’s own common sense has once
again given way to political pragmatism.

For years, all sorts of elite collections of Ottawa big-
wigs, the Canadian Bar Association chief among them,
have routinely pooh-poohed any opposition talk of open-
ing up the judicial appointment process, claiming all sorts

 

of cataclysmic consequences will result if the country
embraces any sort of partisan, American-style proposal
that potentially gives elected politicians veto power. If
nothing else, Harper is a man who desperately wants to be
liked.

Over the last few years, Harper has repeatedly tried to
harmonize his policies with whatever the Ottawa establish-
ment types are decreeing as the conventional wisdom of
the day, be it on billingualism, healthcare, abortion, cabinet
appointments, or whatever else. Shedding his party’s “radi-
cal” image has long been priority number one for Harper.
Sadly, more often than not it’s been the conservative radi-
calism of “democratic reform” that the new PM has been
most willing to purge. Fully democratic Supreme Court
appointment will now go the way of national referendums,
MP recall legislation, and a triple-E senate in the vast
graveyard of abandoned Reform Party promises of yester-
year.

Still, even this minor reform is better than nothing. For
once, Canadians will actually be able to see a member of
their Supreme Court speaking publicly on television, hope-
fully answering poignant questions about his judicial phi-
losophy. The convention will be hard for any future Prime
Minister to repeal; once we’ve heard from one judge we’ll
expect to hear from them all.

Underlying all the hysterics about Americanizing or
politicizing our judicial system is an absurd myth—perpet-
uated by countless judges, lawyers, and law professors—
that Canada’s judicial branch of government is somehow a
fundamentally apolitical establishment. Of course, until
now there has never really been an objective way to test
this theory, as even daring to ask judges simple political
questions has been deemed too much of a taint on their
magical aura of neutrality. Now that the nation’s elected
politicians have finally gained a visible role in the appoint-
ment process, a key piece of this phony mythos has been
permanently chipped away.

It may not be a large victory, but with this Prime
Minister, it doesn’t look there will be many of those any-
way.

 

| Just Want To Live!

Protecting health care in Canada

   

  
   

Left Overs

lain Reeve, OP Fella

 

The BC throne speech: a sack of puffed up lies aimed to
quell the dissidence of an angry or apathetic electorate
wrapped in a cloak of faux anonymity and worn out royal-
ist traditions...or, a chance for the government to artfully

lay out their agenda in a coherent and grandiose way that
will invoke inspiration in parliamentarian and citizen alike?

I don’t know. To be perfectly honest I’ve never sat
through a whole one. As with most things attempting to
masquerade as in-depth policy statements, a bulleted sum-
mary is usually the best way to
absorb the real meat of it.
And directly to the right of
the first bullet in the recent
BC throne speech: health care.

Yes, everyone’s biggest hot
button issue—largely because
it’s the one that makes sure we
don’t die from things like
infected paper cuts—struck
policy gold in Victoria as the
government announced a whole slew of health care inno-
vations that are...just swell.

The Campbell government intends to look at moving
for change in the Canada Health Act to ensure optimum
service, to go on fact-finding trips to Europe to investigate

“Matters of life and

death should be kept
separate from matters
of profit and wealth.”

other health care systems, and to allow citizens to “choose”
the type of system they want—likely offering a choice
between single or two-tier health care. Details as to the
method of this choosing are unknown, though neither
three-legged races nor milk drinking competitions have
been ruled out.

While there is very little in the
speech that explicitly states it, the
NDP, the media, and most onlookers
have sensed a subtext in the govern-
ment looking for ways to normalize
privatization of health services. This is
a debate that has raged strongly in
Canada for some time. But even the
most strongly inclined knee-jerk critic
must admit that some of the benefits
are enticing.

Easing the load on the public system could shorten
wait times for everyone. Increased financial benefits for
doctors would stop the exodus of many to the American
system. Also, there is some stock in the belief that private