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 now read the substantive parts of the Brown J's decision declaring "[t]hat appointments to fill judicial vacancies" in s 96 and s 101 courts "must be made within a reasonable time" (https://t.co/CU54f4p82e). A thread with a couple of preliminary thoughts. 1/
— Leonid Sirota (@DoubleAspect) February 13, 2024
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.
We are making judicial appointments at the fastest pace in history. We made 100 judicial appointments last year, a number never attained by the Conservatives. In 6 months as Minister, I have appointed 64 judges. That was Harper's average annual number – I’m working twice as fast.
— Arif Virani (@viraniarif) February 13, 2024
We are carefully reviewing this morning's decision. There are multiple factors that contribute to court delays and we call upon the provinces and territories to also do their part to help.
— Arif Virani (@viraniarif) February 13, 2024
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.”
Ukraine has shifted from offensive to defensive operation, – stated the Commander-in-Chief of Ukrainian Armed Force Oleksandr #Syrsky in an interview with ZDF.
Its goal is to exhaust the enemy, and inflict maximum losses upon it. Ukraine is going to achieve it by using…
— UkraineWorld (@ukraine_world) February 13, 2024
Number of the day!
12,000 russian armored vehicles have been destroyed since February 24, 2022. On average, 500 vehicles per month.russian weapons deserve to be scrap metal in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/ITbNESRkBo
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) February 13, 2024