Prime minister Justin Trudeau announced yesterday that he will be appointing Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin to the Supreme Court of Canada, making her the first Indigenous justice on the top court. She will be replacing Justice Michael Moldaver, who retires on September 1st, a few months ahead of his mandatory date, and this is for one of the Court’s three Ontario seats. While it was a given that this appointment would be a woman in order to restore gender balance on the court, there has been pressure for an Indigenous justice for a while. This government has also mandated that official bilingualism should also be a requirement for appointment, which shrinks the pool of available Indigenous candidates a whole lot. And it’s not without controversy—it is true that, as many Indigenous activists point out, that kind of linguistic requirement is colonial, but it also has been pointed out that relaxing those kinds of requirements is generally done at the expense of French, which is also a very fraught notion with the insistence that French is “in decline” in the country (which is debatable, because use of French has been up in Quebec, but they are paranoid about the “mother tongue” statistics, which is generally about immigrants for whom French is not their first language).

While you can read O’Bonsawin’s application questionnaire here, it’s worthwhile noting that she comes to the Supreme Court directly from the Superior Court rather than the Court of Appeal. This isn’t a big deal, but it does speak to the pool of available candidates, because there are exceedingly few Indigenous judges at the appeal court level. This being said, it’s perfectly permissible to appoint people to the Supreme Court if they’re law professors, or even lawyers working in a firm—Justice Suzanne Côté was appointed directly from practice. This being said, O’Bonsawin has academic chops to add to her experience, with a PhD in the Gladue sentencing principles, which are about taking proper life circumstances into account during sentencing for Indigenous people. She also has done a lot of work around mental health, which is also important in the current legal environment, so it does look like she will bring a wealth of experience to the bench. The only thing I would say is that with Moldaver’s retirement, there is no longer a criminal justice specialist on the Supreme Court, which may be an issue in the longer-term, but there are enough bright minds on the court that I wouldn’t be too worried about it.

Meanwhile, here is some reaction from the president of the Canadian Bar Association, and several Indigenous leaders.

Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin is one of the judges from Elgin St. She is kind, patient, helpful, and thoughtful. I quite like her.

— James Bowie (@JamesDBowie) August 19, 2022

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 177:

Ukraine has been making several drone attacks in the areas of Nova Kakhovka, near the occupied city of Kherson, as well as possibly the Crimean port of Yevpatoriya, which seems to be about Ukrainians showing their capabilities to Russian aggressors. Ukraine is also warning that Russia is planning a “large scale provocation” around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in an attempt to decouple it from the Ukrainian grid and attach it to the Russian grid, which is apparently a complex operation that could cause a disaster. Meanwhile, doctors talk about why they are staying in place in war-hit towns in Ukraine.

Good reads:

• At a media availability, Justin Trudeau said he hopes that MPs and senators going to Taiwan consider all of the consequences of the trip.
• The German chancellor arrives in Canada on Sunday, and the goal of the trip is long-term green energy agreements, which won’t be immediate as some have suggested.
• The Secretary-General of NATO will visit Canada next week, including some of our Arctic defence sites in Nunavut.
• Health Canada has approved booster doses for children aged 5-11.
• The interim import ban on handguns went into effect yesterday.
• Lawrence MacAulay has ordered an investigation into the allegation that a staffer at VAC suggested assisted dying for a PTSD case (and moral panic ensued).
• An “anti-racism” contractor hired by the government is being investigated for antisemitic tweets, because of course.
• When the government legalised cannabis, they forgot to update certain regulations around protecting police from prosecutions, and now that may harm court cases.
• One of the Royal Canadian Navy’s new slushbreakers has a busted generator and can’t participate in this year’s Arctic exercises.
• At the Commons’ transport committee, Omar Alghabra said there’s no evidence ArriveCan is causing delays; there have only been 190 tickets for non-compliance.
• Liberals in Toronto are starting to freak out because the proposed electoral boundary redistribution would lose a Toronto seat for other fast-growing regions.
• Justin Ling does a deep dive into the World Economic Forum conspiracy theories, and why they have become so prevalent of late.

Odds and ends:

Remember, all political leaders must be dour, joyless old men. Those are the rules. https://t.co/tS4E8Q73JJ

— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) August 19, 2022

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