Roundup: A dubious Federal Court decision, but right about judicial appointments

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The Federal Court ruled yesterday that the federal government must start filling judicial vacancies faster because, which is true, but the judgment itself is something of a mess. It’s hard to see how the Court has jurisdiction here, and the judge seems to have invented a bunch of justification and has handwaved around constitutional conventions, and in the end, declared that the government must fill most of those vacancies “in a reasonable period of time,” which is vague and of little value other than the declaration. Emmett Macfarlane has promised a post on this soon, and Leonid Sirota has a thread here taking issue with the reasoning (though not the underlying issue of not making sufficient appointments—everyone is agreed on that point).

I have been writing on this government’s problems with appointments since probably their second year in office, possibly even sooner than that. While you can look up the myriad of columns I have written, the short version is this: The government wants to make diverse appointments (which is good! This is a good thing!) but they insisted on a system of self-nominations rather than going out and nominating people. We know that women, people of colour, and LGBTQ+ people routinely don’t apply for positions like this because society has drilled into them the message that only straight, old white men get positions like this. Even the Liberal Party itself gets this in their candidate selection process, where they set up systems to be persistent in getting women and diverse people to seek nominations. And even with that, the federal government has utterly dropped that ball and thinks that they can simply say “We’re accepting diverse applications!” and expecting those applications to flood in. They seem to act like the Sesame Street sketch where Ernie simply goes “Here, fishy, fishy, fishy!” and the fish leap into the boat. That’s not how this works, and when they don’t get enough applications, it slows down the process tremendously. And after seven years, they have absolutely refused to learn this lesson. Refused! It’s some kind of giant ideological blinder that they cannot get their collective heads around, no matter how many times the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court warns them, or the Auditor General sounds the alarm about vacancies on port authorities or the boards of Crown corporations, or even their process for appointing senators. They absolutely refuse to learn the lessons of their failures.

It does bear mentioning that there has been an uptick in the pace of appointments in the past few months, and filling vacancies for provincial chief justices and associate chief justices has also picked up speed (and yes, I have been keeping an eye out for this). That said, making federal judicial appointments faster won’t solve the problems with our justice system because a lot more of them involve provinces not properly resourcing provincial courts or superior courts, where you have a lot of cases where there are no court rooms or court staff available, and that causes as many if not more problems. The issue of federal appointments, however, is low-hanging fruit so it’s taking a lot more attention than it should, and once again, premiers are being allowed to skate because of it.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Russians have struck a hospital and apartments in Selydove in eastern Ukraine, killing three people. Here’s a look at how Ukrainians are decoding Russian battle communications to save lives on the front lines. Russia is pulling old tanks out of storage and refurbishing them after having lost more than 3000 in the fighting in Ukraine over the past two years. Ukraine’s military intelligence is now saying that Russia has been buying Starlink terminals by way of “Arab countries.”

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau has appointed a new senator from Quebec, making it his 81st appointment of independent senators.
  • Sean Fraser says he didn’t ignore the warnings about lifting the cap on student hours when he was immigration minister, citing the massive labour shortages.
  • Fraser announced $176 million in housing deals with over 60 rural municipalities.
  • Diane Lebouthillier is musing about closing the elver fishery this year (possibly with Indigenous exceptions) because of the rise in illegal harvesting the past four years.
  • The national housing advocate says that closing encampments violates rights, as not every offered shelter option provides safety or privacy.
  • Cyber-security specialists, who were not consulted at the big auto theft summit, say that banning the “Flipper Zero” devices won’t actually do anything.
  • Canada’s shortage of air traffic controllers is worried about a downgrade in Canada’s UN-mandated regulatory, oversight and inspection regime.
  • Speaker Fergus wants more vetting of guests being recognised in the galleries (you think?) but the Conservatives keep up their false narrative of PMO vetting.
  • The heritage committee is summoning Bell’s CEO over their recent media job cuts.
  • James Bezan says the Conservatives would re-negotiate the Ukraine trade deal without mention of carbon pricing, because who cares what Ukraine wants?
  • Some rank-and-file grassroots Conservatives are quitting because the party has started parachuting candidates into ridings without nomination processes.
  • Jagmeet Singh is mulling a possible end of the Supply-and-Confidence Agreement (which would just mean he has less leverage and fewer wins he can take credit for).
  • Doug Ford, in full panic mode, wants to ensure any future carbon pricing regimes are subject to a referendum (which is stupid— you can’t bind future legislatures).
  • The Northwest Territories has signed their strings-attached healthcare agreement with the federal government.
  • Paul Wells pulls together a number of different threads on the state of our economy, present and future, and the effort governments make to building toward that future.
  • My column wonders if the government can try to craft smart policy when it comes to auto thefts, or if they’ll bow to the reflexive demands of tougher penalties.

Odds and Ends:

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