Everyone agrees that Steven Harper has historically shown excellent political judgment. For god sakes, he found a way to become Prime Minister of Canada nine years after calling it “a Northern European welfare state, in the worst sense of the term”. That, my friends, takes political genius!
You can therefore imagine my surprise when I read in today’s online Globe and Mail that he had decided to keep alive the old Liberal tradition of making partisan appointments. That’s right, at least 16 of the 33 men and women appointed to the committee in charge of choosing new judges are conservative partisans, including a former politician, political staffers and defeated candidates. For a party which succeeded in making itself look transparent, that certainly isn’t the way to win an election.
I guess I should have expected it. Now that he has a relatively stable government, Harper is starting to show his true colours. He just couldn’t resist the temptation of appointing a bunch of ideologically conservative individuals to the judge selection panel, even though they were totally unqualified. For god’s sakes, he appointed an unsuccessful conservative candidate whose background is in firefighting! That’s right; we now have a firefighter picking judges. I have nothing against firefighters, I think they’re tremendous individuals, but isn’t it a bit like asking a math teacher to pick the NAC Orchestra Concertmaster?
I have always been proud of Canadian society giving people second chances, giving people an opportunity to rethink themselves and restart their lives. This being said, I also believe in being rational. Is it really rational to expect an ex-leader of the
I’m sure Mr. Harper understood this move would cost him support, I just don’t think he had the guts to pass on an opportunity to make our justice system ideologically more conservative.
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