It really was a blow to Stephen Harper, and his judgement when making appointments. The Supreme Court in a 6-1 decision rebuked not only the appointment of Justice Nadon to the Supreme Court, but also the declaratory provisions passed in the omnibus budget implementation bill that made the appointment okay. Nadon never was a Supreme Court justice and remains a supernumerary justice on the Federal Court of Appeal, his appointment and swearing in ceremony null and void. There was a lot of reaction to the decision, including from Justin Trudeau who pointed out that this is a sign that Harper couldn’t even get the big things right, which puts his judgement into question (ironic, since that’s what the Conservatives are trying to attack Trudeau about). The Toronto lawyer who brought forward the challenge wonders why it was left up to him, a private citizen, to do something about the government’s attempt at subverting the constitution, and on his own dime. Adam Dodek walks Maclean’s through the decision, and in a separate op-ed says the ruling represents the entrenchment of the Court’s constitutional independence, and a serious blow to the “transparent” appointment process that Harper put into place. Emmett Macfarlane goes further into the repudiation of the appointment process, and says that the consequences of this decision will almost certainly mean doom for the government’s Senate reform reference. Carissima Mathen, who appeared at committee and said that the declaratory provisions were doomed to fail (and was mocked for it) gets the last laugh. Liberal MP and former justice minister Irwin Cotler draws the lessons from the whole affair as to the flawed appointment process, the government’s own delays in selection, and their ignoring the warnings that Nadon’s appointment was going to present a problem.
The day wasn’t finished for court defeats for the government, as the Federal Court issued an injunction that allows medical marijuana users to continue to grow their own past the April 1st deadline of when the new regulations for commercially produced product go into effect. We’ll see how the full court challenge goes once it reaches that stage.
Stephen Harper is now on his brief visit to Ukraine, a country which looks up to Canada as a possible model for better democratic institutions or means of teaching their public bodies about controlling finances – though Canada perhaps is not the best role model for either of those at present. In fact, a group of international professors are now expressing their concerns about the Fair Elections Act because it sets a poor example for emerging democracies, which can’t be good for our reputation abroad.
The Liberals are asking the Speaker to investigate those NDP branch offices, and the matter will also be going to the Board of Internal Economy on Monday. The NDP say they got authorization to do it, but that sounds like it was a one-time authorization for the Montreal office in 2011, and that it didn’t necessarily apply to other branch offices. Let me also say that the NDP constantly bringing up the dreaded “Ottawa bubble” recently is not only populist and parochial, but it’s getting awfully annoying. I thought the only bubble to beware of was Rover.
What’s that? Treasury Board Secretariat is warning that all of those “back office” cuts being implemented as fiscal restraint measures are happening too fast and without enough planning and direction? You don’t say!
Elections Canada is setting up an electoral integrity office under its umbrella to help reassure the voting public that there won’t be the kinds of shenanigans that we saw the last time, with misleading robocalls and whatnot. Part of their task will be a complete review of Elections Canada’s current operational model.
Justin Trudeau dropped by the riding of Trinity Spadina unannounced during his trip to that city, to see what was going on there on the ground. While blocked nomination candidate Christine Innes and the riding president continue to stir up trouble, the party’s national campaign directors have decided that once they had evidence of Innes’ team’s misdeeds, their decision to block the nomination was final. I also have a hard time believing that the riding president was getting calls from people in tears about the decision, but maybe they just take their politics really seriously.
Two Canadians were killed in a terror attack in a Kabul luxury hotel, as was an AFP journalist and his family. David Pugliese describes the layers of security at that hotel, which in the end proved ineffective against the attack.
Mark Kennedy writes about Stephen Harper’s odd fixation with Justin Trudeau, and how it may stem from Harper’s utter contempt for Trudeau’s father.
The debate over the role of gender in the hasty ouster of Alberta premier Alison Redford continues to rage on. Susan Delacourt looks at the double standard over “not nice” as it applied to Redford and not any other male political leaders (though one imagines that the circumstances are a little more complicated than that, considering that she didn’t have the support of caucus going into the job).
Energy economist Andrew Leach looks at the issue of carbon pricing versus the rate or return on oilsands mines, and that the bigger danger lies not in emissions regulations at the point of extraction, but rather in the end-use.
And the folks at iPolitics imagine post cards from MPs over March Break.