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In an email, she characterized the matter as part of the\nnormal process of appointing a Supreme Court justice, which involves \u201ctypically\nCONFIDENTIAL conversations and communications \u2014 back and forths between the PM\nand the AG (attorney general) on potential candidates for appointment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She said she’s \u201cnot at liberty to comment\u201d on the \u201cveracity\u201d\nof what the sources said occurred, adding, \u201cCommentary\/reporting in this regard\nwith respect to a SCC appointment(s) could compromise the integrity of the\nappointments process and potentially sitting justices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The issue suggests Trudeau may have had reasons unrelated to\nthe SNC-Lavalin affair for moving Wilson-Raybould out of the prestigious\nJustice portfolio earlier this year \u2014 a cabinet shuffle that touched off a\nfull-blown political crisis for the governing Liberals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wilson-Raybould has said she believes she was moved to\nVeterans Affairs as punishment for refusing to intervene to stop a criminal\nprosecution of the Montreal engineering giant on bribery charges related to\ncontracts in Libya. Trudeau has denied the SNC matter had anything to do with\nthe decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She resigned a month later amid allegations she was\nimproperly pressured by the Prime Minister’s Office to interfere in the\nSNC-Lavalin case, triggering a furor that has engulfed the Trudeau government\never since. The PMO refused to comment on the story Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The issue, the sources say, arose after Beverley McLachlin\nannounced in June 2017 her decision to retire that December after 28 years on\nthe high court, including 17 as chief justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her retirement meant the government would have to choose a\nnew chief justice and find another bilingual judge from western or\nnorthern Canada to sit on the nine-member bench.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trudeau created an independent, non-partisan advisory board,\nheaded by former Conservative prime minister Kim Campbell, to identify\nqualified candidates to fill the western\/northern vacancy and submit a short\nlist of three to five names for consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the sources, one of the names on the eventual\nlist was Glenn Joyal, who had been appointed in 2011 by former Conservative\nprime minister Stephen Harper as chief justice of Manitoba’s Court of Queen’s\nBench.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wilson-Raybould then sent Trudeau a 60-plus-page memo\narguing that Joyal should not only be added to the top court but should be\nnamed chief justice as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Only once before in Canadian history \u2014 in 1906, when Sir Wilfrid\nLaurier appointed his justice minister to the top judicial job \u2014 has a prime\nminister chosen a chief justice who was not already sitting on the Supreme\nCourt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wilson-Raybould’s pick puzzled Trudeau but he became\ndisturbed after doing some research into Joyal’s views on the charter, the\nsources said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Joyal had criticized the judiciary for broadly interpreting\ncharter rights and expanding them to apply to things not explicitly mentioned\nin the charter or, in his view, intended by provincial premiers when they\nagreed to enshrine a charter in the Constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Supreme Court’s liberal interpretation has led to things\nlike legalization of same-sex marriage, the right of women to choose to have an\nabortion and the legalization of medical assistance in dying, among other\nthings ?\u2014 developments Trudeau has celebrated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a January 2017 speech to the Canadian Constitution\nFoundation’s Law and Freedom Conference, Joyal echoed conservative arguments\nthat the top court has usurped the supremacy of elected legislatures to\ndetermine social policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The charter, Joyal argued, was the result of a compromise\nbetween Pierre Trudeau and premiers, most of whom had originally opposed\ninclusion of a charter in the Constitution. The compromise was intended to\nmaintain a balance between the judiciary and the legislative branch of\ngovernment, with provisions allowing governments to limit or override rights\naltogether in some circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since then, judicial interpretation of the charter has\nignored the intentions of the drafters and \u201cled without question to a level of\njudicial potency that was not anticipated back in 1982,\u201d Joyal said in the\nspeech, a video of which is available on the foundation’s website. That, in\nturn, has resulted in a \u201cless potent and less influential legislative branch\nthat seldom has the final word.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWith the ‘constitutionalizing’ of more and more political\nand social issues into fundamental rights, the Canadian judiciary has all but\nremoved those issues, in a fairly permanent way, from the realm of future civic\nengagement and future political debate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Joyal was particularly critical of the Supreme Court’s\ninterpretation of section 7 of the charter ?\u2014 the section which guarantees\neveryone the right to life, liberty and security of the person and under which\nthe top court struck down Canada’s abortion law and the prohibition on\nmedically assisted death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The court’s liberal interpretation of that section \u201chas\nbecome, particularly in recent years, the single most fertile source for the\ndiscovery of new rights and the de facto constitutionalization of political and\nsocial issues,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trudeau rejected Wilson-Raybould’s advice. He ended up\nappointing Sheila Martin, a judge on the appeal courts of Alberta, Northwest\nTerritories and Nunavut, to fill the vacant western Canadian seat on the bench.\nSitting Supreme Court Justice Richard Wagner was elevated to the role of chief\njustice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shortly after Trudeau told Wilson-Raybould he did not\nsupport her choice, the sources said Joyal withdrew his name from\nconsideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a statement Monday, Joyal makes no mention of the former\nminister, saying he submitted an application for consideration for the Supreme\nCourt in 2017, only to be forced to withdraw his name for personal reasons\nrelated to his wife’s health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI fear that someone is using my previous candidacy to the\nSupreme Court of Canada to further an agenda unrelated to the\nappointment process,\u201d Joyal said. \u201cThis is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wilson-Raybould’s advocacy of Joyal for the top judicial job\nmay not come as a total surprise to some Liberals, who’ve privately noted what\nthey consider her conservative, restrictive approach to charter rights in a\nnumber of bills, including those dealing with assisted dying, impaired driving\nand genetic discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jane Philpott, as health minister at the time, was jointly\nresponsible with Wilson-Raybould for the assisted dying legislation. She quit\nthe cabinet earlier this month in solidarity with Wilson-Raybould, saying she\nno longer had confidence in the government’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin\naffair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OTTAWA \u2014 Jody Wilson-Raybould recommended in 2017 that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau nominate a conservative Manitoba judge to be chief …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":204381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","category-uncategorized","mauthors-joan-bryden","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206861"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206863,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206861\/revisions\/206863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}