Roundup: Ambrose’s bill becomes law

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Bill C-3 passed the Senate yesterday and received royal assent. Many of you will know this as Rona Ambrose’s bill to mandate sexual assault training by judges, and it’s been a weird little ride through the parliamentary process, starting with Ambrose’s original bill in the previous parliament, dying on the Order Paper at the election, and the current government resurrecting it in principle, but not the same bill. Why? Because the original bill was blatantly unconstitutional in how it infringed on judicial independence, and was entirely unworkable in terms of how lawyers who wanted to apply to be judges needed to conduct themselves.

In order to make the bill palatable, it had to be rewritten as a hollow shell – essentially a suggestion for future judges, because anything else would be untenable. So we now have a useless but symbolic bill on the books that will do very little to solve the problem that Ambrose perceived, but instead will have new unintended consequences – namely, as former Supreme Court of Canada Executive Legal Officer Gib van Ert outlines here, that it has opened the door to new bills demanding that judges take training on any other area of law or policy that is the flavour of the day, and while they may be important in and of themselves, it is corrosive to judicial independence because it portrays them as being beholden to the whims of the government of the day rather than maintaining a distance and independence from that government’s wishes.

The more concerning aspect of this bill’s particular path however was just how uncritically it was treated by media outlets around the country. Ambrose would appear on the political talk shows every few months to complain that it was being held up by the “old boys’ club,” and not once did anyone mention the list of valid and legitimate complaints and concerns about the bill, in particular its dubious constitutionality. Not once. The first time it happened, I timed myself in that it took me twenty minutes to review Senate testimony at second reading to compile the list of problems that were raised. Twenty minutes of homework, and not one report or producer of a political show bothered to put in the work, and they simply let Ambrose talk about her bill uncritically, and unchallenged. Not one. It’s kind of alarming that something as important as judicial independence was quite literally ignored by every major outlet in the country, because they wanted to promote a feel-good bill about sexual assault training. That’s pretty concerning.

Good reads:

  • While certain parties are freaking out about threats by the Michigan governor to shot down Line 5, she can’t actually do that because it’s under federal authority.
  • We can expect some 650,000 AstraZeneca doses coming from our COVAX commitment within the coming weeks.
  • The prime minister’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, has volunteered to appear at defence committee today on the General Vance allegations.
  • The government is promising two new heavy icebreakers – one to be built in Vancouver, the other at Davie shipyard in Quebec, because jobs.
  • There are concerns that proposed amendments to Bill C-10 won’t solve the problems, as discoverability rules are still considered a free expression violation.
  • CSIS’ leadership, including the director, fought attempts at mandatory masking in the office – and then had several outbreaks, including the Director catching it.
  • The union representing CRA auditors says that they are being “outgunned” by professional tax firms while trying to combat overseas tax avoidance and evasion.
  • Jagmeet Singh is promising a heavy foreign home buyers’ tax and a massive investment in housing construction (but good luck with finding enough labour).
  • Leah West writes about her sexual assault while in the military, and why the organization has to reform itself from within, as change won’t take otherwise.
  • Mike Moffatt and John McNally explore how the clean economy is going to require a lot more skilled workers, and we don’t have enough places to house them as it is.
  • Heather Scoffield tries to navigate between the growth forecasts in the budget, and the dourer prediction by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

Odds and ends:

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One thought on “Roundup: Ambrose’s bill becomes law”

  1. It is still astounding to me that anyone could view the lengthy, ponderous, controversial, difficult evolution of Canadian laws on sexual assault as merely a ‘flavour of the month’ policy whim, subject to reversal whenever a new government might appear.
    No law ever solves every problem, but I’m still glad the Liberals passed it. The unfortunate thing is that such a law was even necessary.
    That judges anywhere in Canada could still blame women for their own sexual assaults is infuriating. At least this law tells the men who aspire to be judges that Canada will no longer tolerate adolescent fantasies about women secretly wanting to be raped.

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