There is no comparison between the weight of opinion brought to the debate on the important issue of judicial independence by the Rt. Hon Beverly McLachlin, Canada’s top jurist, and the Hon. Jason Kenney, whose legal credentials are… are… according to Wikipedia that he dropped out of his undergraduate degree, never formally studied law, and is not a member of any bar.
Even Minister Kenney’s own communications people, especially Kasra Nejatian his Director of Communications, have issued no statement as to the correctness of Minister Kenney’s views on the separation of powers and judicial independence. Nejatian, quoted here in Postmedia News, merely defends the minister’s freedom of speech, which is the Parliament Hill admission that Kenney is entitled to his opinion, no matter how incorrect, partisan, and deliberately misinformed it might be.
It should also be reasonably clear that Minister Kenney’s statements were never intended to be taken seriously. If the government had a serious legal position to make, then they would have sent someone serious to make it. If they actually intended to influence an assembly of judges, they would have sent someone with some history of judicial persuasion. The intention in sending Kenney to merely scream at a group of jurists, who by convention do not engage in politics and will not scream back. Kenney, as stupid as his suggestion that judges should respect the agenda of the government is, managed to position himself as a legally illiterate fool who is all the while tough on crime. Kenney’s goal must be to brand himself as a “populist” idiot who yells at judges on behalf of all those who refuse to understand the law. Perhaps he will be successful with that.
Chief Justice McLachlin is a great legal mind, and I read her decisions with great interest. I was surprised though to see her speak publicly about this matter, which isn’t merely beneath her notice but should probably also be beneath mine. Jason Kenney is an utter twit and the suggestion by many that his uneducated ultrapartisanship shall one day deliver him to the leadership of his party and the Prime Minister’s Office is insulting to me as a Canadian. That lofty office is the legacy of more respectable politicians like Kim Campbell and Mackenzie Bowell, and it should never be perverted by the likes of Kenney who deliberately refuse to understand the fundamentals of our constitution and government.
Those who are familiar with the Chief Justice’s remarks, including Kenney’s own staff, cannot but agree that only the learned judge and not the dropout former Reformer makes any sense at all. In a purely political sense, however, this has to be a win for Minister Kenney, who otherwise could never see his name published in anything so conceitedly close to the Chief Justice’s, who is usually quoted next to her peers, great legal minds like Lord Bingham, Neil Papworth, and the Rt. Hon Antonio Lamer.
