The Globe and Mail has an interesting read about the way in which the current government is making a concerted effort to appoint more women to the bench as it (slowly) makes its judicial appointments. While the numbers of women appointed are disproportionate to the numbers that have applied, that seems less concerning to me because it has been shown that fewer women will apply to positions like these because they tend to downplay their own qualifications (just as with trying to get more women to run for public office). I also think that the justice minister has a point when she says that part of the reason for so few appointments being made from visible minorities is in part because there are too few applying, and too few in the justice system as a whole. I also look to something that Senator Jaffer said to me in a piece I wrote for the Law Times about the judicial appointments issue, which is that for many of the appointment committees, they don’t tend to look beyond their own boxes when they make recommendations, so we see fewer women and visible minorities being put forward, and that proactive approaches have been shown to be needed in the past. This government seems to be willing to go some of the distance in bridging that gap, but as always, more work needs to be done, and yes, it’s taking far too long in most of the cases.

What does bother me is the notion that by appointing women and minorities is that this is simply about quotas, and it’s the exact same things we’ve been hearing in the past couple of weeks with regards to people making their evaluations of the federal cabinet, and the quiet clucking of tongues when they go “rookie, diversity hire, not very competent.” Never mind that in many cases, much of the judging is harsh, unfair to the person or the situation they were put into, or deliberately misconstrued to present a worse picture than what actually happened (such as with Maryam Monsef). Never mind the fact that if none of these people are given a chance as rookies, they won’t actually get experience. And yes, some of them are performing poorly (and even more curiously, the ones who I think actually are having problems are the ones who are never the ones being written about). But hearing the constant quota refrain is getting tiresome to read about.

Good reads:

• The government has tabled legislation to solidify their oil tanker ban on the northern BC coast.
• Among the changes the government is approving to the safe injection sites bill are one which can offer pharmaceutical grade options to addicts.
• The government has agreed to adopt most of the Senate’s amendments to the RCMP unionization bill (after sitting on them for nearly a year).
• CSIS and CSE are doing an evaluation of how vulnerable our elections are to cyberattacks (which has nothing to do with online voting, by the way).
• Any decisions around a peacekeeping deployment have been delayed (pretty much indefinitely) while our allies are in political turmoil.
• The government has appointed an advisory board around reopening prison farms.
• The union representing Parliament Hill guards has filed a complaint against the RCMP over their ongoing protest over their negotiations.
• Deepak Obhrai says only ten percent of the party’s membership are visible minorities…but nobody knows where he got that number from.
• Colby Cosh is curious about the absentee ballot phenomenon in BC, while Andrew Coyne hopes the Greens there push for electoral reform with their clout.
• Andrew MacDougall questions the ethos of “government by cabinet” with a cabinet so full of rookies who are apparently not getting much done.
• Paul Wells notes the carnage happening in Mali while the government continues to dither on a peacekeeping mission decision.
• Susan Delacourt speaks to a couple of authors about the danger of complacency around race issues in Canada.

Odds and ends:

The search is on for a new Parliamentary Poet Laureate.