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Slipping away

Supreme Court appointments must be taken out of PM’s hands

A while back, speaking to a conference of Republicans Abroad, I told the audience that up north, a prime minister unilaterally decides who sits on ‘our’ Supreme Court of Canada.

No bipartisan vetting or confirmation process by an independent Parliamentary committee.

Well, they could hardly believe such absolute authoritarian power could exist in a supposedly democratic nation.

Just what kind of a banana republic did we have in Canada?

The alarm by the GOP audience, came back as I penned “Judge for yourself ” (Aug. 2) about President George W. Bush’s nomination of John Roberts to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court and how Bush, who has a majority in the Senate, still has to persuade the Democrats to accept his choice.

Despite Roberts’ superb qualifications—an outstanding lawyer, according to the American Bar Association—it will still be a huge battle that dominates headlines and TV newscasts.

In Canada, no one gets to question our Supreme Court nominees—because there are no nominees. The prime minister uses his dictatorial power to put whom he wants on the highest court, and it’s a done deal.

This is why, across the past decade, only twice as I can recall has our Supreme Court made decisions that do not fit into the Lib-Left thrust of the Jean Chretien/Paul Martin regime.

Those were the decisions that our fabled health-care system is so inadequate we should be able to seek better care by buying our own insurance, and the ruling aboriginal people shouldn’t be able to rip off our forests by logging commercially and indiscriminately for their own commercial purposes.

All other rulings have sat well with the self-serving and self-satisfied Liberal hierarchy.

Thus, in a frightening way, the Supreme Court has become irrelevant to most Canadians even as it rulings are extremely relevant.

Go into any bar in the U.S. and 999 people out of 1,000 will be able to tell you the Chief Justice of their Supreme Court is William Rehnquist.

Stop the next 1,000 people you meet today and ask who is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

OK, go and look it up.

In the U.S., most could name you several of the other eight justices—say Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and the awful, arrogant Bill Clinton appointee, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Here, you might well bat zero.

In “Judge for yourself ” I noted while Clinton, egged on by the long-suffering Hillary, tried to politicize the court, Bush has declared justices will not take the place of the elected representatives of the people.

“I do not believe in liberal, activist judges. We need people who will not legislate from the Bench,” he said.

Who said this man wasn’t very bright?

The process in the U.S. is so open and so democratic that even senators who have disgraced themselves get to puff out their chests and sound indignant.

One senator who is already gnashing his teeth over Bush’s choice is that old roue and failed lifeguard Teddy Kennedy.

Kennedy, who has taken on the mantle of Washington’s arbiter of truth and integrity, left Mary Jo Kopechne to drown while he fled the scene at Edgartown Bridge in 1969 and then tried to dredge up some alibi that he was not driving the car that night so as not to spoil his reputation.

Another fellow with a besmirched reputation who is up in arms about the Roberts nomination is the Senate’s number two Democrat, Dick Durbin.

Durbin achieved considerable notoriety when he charged the Guantanamo detention camp—air conditioning, clean laundry every day and meal menus that would do justice to most family restaurants in Canada—was akin to a Nazi death camp or Soviet Gulag.

Faced with a backlash from the American people, Durbin murmured he had somehow been misunderstood.

Yet, as hypocritical as these two senators may be, it shows something that they still have a say, and with Kennedy an influential say, in who will sit on the Supreme Court.

In Canada, you could have a charge of 100 top-notch MPs arguing against one of the prime minister’s choices and every single voice would be rebuffed as they fell on stone-deaf ears.

Again, friends, we surely have to take Supreme Court appointments solely out of the hands of the prime minister of the day.

For, if not, our country is increasingly going to slip out of our hands.

Paul Jackson
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