Rona Ambrose’s judicial training bill looks like it may have some life left in it, as Independent Senator Pierre Dalphond himself a former judge, has started making deals and compromises to see the bill go ahead in an amended form. Working both with the bill’s Senate sponsor and one of its critics, Dalphond has come up with an amended version of the bill which should address most of its critics, and apparently got a procedural deal passed in the Senate as a whole, which gave instruction for the legal and constitutional affairs committee to hold a special session next week to deal with the bill, outside of the normal process where it would be dealing with government business (which is the whole reason the bill hasn’t gone anywhere – the committee is loaded with government bills, which Senate rules state needs to take precedence).

The amendments would ensure that a judicial appointee must commit to sexual assault law training as designed by the Canadian Judicial Council, and administered by the National Judicial Institute – moves that address many of the concerns around judicial independence (which likely would have rendered the bill unconstitutional), and would have created conflicts of interest where the bill as it stands would demand that future judges need to be trained by sexual assault survivors groups – the same groups that would normally be called upon to be expert witnesses in trials. This help to address other concerns about the bill, such as access for lawyers who aren’t in urban centres, or that requiring training before application would tip off coworkers to those lawyers that they were applying for a position on the bench. I remain curious what other objections the Canadian Judicial Council still has about the bill, but I guess we’ll find out next week when they will likely appear at the committee.

This all having been said, we need to remember that the Canadian Judicial Council has been seized with this issue for a few years now and has been ensuring that there is better training for judges, which is as it should be – the system is already working. That means that Ambrose’s bill is really, if amended, just another bit of feel-good legislation that MPs keep burdening the Order Paper with. (Note that as it stands, the bill is likely unconstitutional and actually a very bad bill despite its good intentions). And as with so many feel-good bills, it takes up all of the space in the media for little actual benefit, but that’s politics these days, unfortunately.

https://twitter.com/adamgoldenberg/status/1132389428910088192

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau says that he’ll raise abortion during his meeting with Grand Moff Tarkin US Vice President Mike Pence today.
• Chrystia Freeland was hoping that the premier of Nova Scotia would bring her concerns to the Chinese ambassador during their meeting, but no dice.
• Seamus O’Regan was unable to finalize an MOU with the Grassy Narrows First Nation about a mercury treatment centre there.
• Catherine McKenna says Canada hasn’t issued any export permits for plastic waste, and yet it has turned up in Malaysia, which raises a lot of questions.
• Harjit Sajjan says he hopes the tender for the new fighter jets will be formally issued by mid-July, with a final decision to be reached by winter 2020.
• Sajjan also says that he’s leaving the question of VADM Mark Norman return to duty up to General Vance, and that he’ll answer any questions the Senate has.
• David Lametti says he does expect a spike in refugee cases at the Federal Court when new rules for asylum claimant eligibility come into force.
• A Quebec judge has given the go-ahead for SNC-Lavalin to go to trial over their fraud and bribery charges, which they intend to fight.
• Last week, the Federal Court issued summaries of one of its judgments in both Cree and Dené audio files, for the first time in Canadian history.
• Regarding new fighter jets, Saab is saying that they can build new Gripen E fighters in Canada, while they complained about loosening rules to accommodate F-35s.
• Here is a look at what could happen in the Senate’s defence committee regarding the invitation for VADM Mark Norman to testify, and whether he may even show up.
• The international grand committee on data privacy talked a lot about “privacy by default” as a standard for platforms.
• They committee also heard from Facebook that they won’t remove any falsified video that might be used in the election unless it violates their Terms of Service.
• Liberals are dismissing the talk about “Liberal insiders” considering Mark Carney for the next leader as “ridiculous” and so on.
• Former Liberal leadership candidate David Bertschi has been nominated to run for the Conservatives in the riding of Orleans.
• Jody Wilson-Raybould says she had no end game in mind throughout the whole Double-Hyphen Affair.
• Kady O’Malley tracks some of the big bills still on the Order Paper.
• Kevin Carmichael parses the Bank of Canada’s latest statement as they held interest rates again – and it’s a pretty rosy outlook.
• Susan Delacourt calls out MPs railing about Facebook as a bunch of pots calling the kettle black, given how much data parties hoover up without privacy laws.
• Andrew Coyne hopes for a happy medium between rigid party controls and the doomed freedom of independent MPs.
• Robert Hiltz schools us on the biggest feel-good sham that we’ve all fallen for – recycling.

Odds and ends:

Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.