MPs reach compromise on vetting of Supreme Court nominees

The Supreme Court of Canada judges are just as important -- maybe more important -- than Cabinet Ministers. From my standpoint it makes sense for there to be a process where their appointment is made transparent.

Cornwall Standard-Freeholder (ON)
Wed 13 Aug 2008
Page: 19
Section: News
Byline: BY JIM BROWN, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Dateline: OTTAWA

An all-party committee of MPs has decided to press ahead with its job of vetting potential nominees for the Supreme Court -- despite opposition worries about the presence on the panel of two Conservative cabinet ministers.

"In the end, we decided unanimously to accept the present composition," Bloc Quebecois MP Real Menard said after the issue was hashed out at a closed-door session of the panel Tuesday.

He said the question of whether cabinet members should sit on similar advisory groups in future will be referred to the Commons justice committee for further study.

"So we're working with the people who were named but we think we made our point," he told RDI, the CBC's French news network.

The comments mark a sharp turnaround from a day earlier when Menard had vowed to work for the removal from the advisory panel of Public Works Minister Christian Paradis and Diane Ablonczy, the secretary of state for small business.

The Bloc and NDP had complained that cabinet members aren't free to offer independent advice on who should fill the seat on the high court.

New Democrat MP Joe Comartin confirmed the committee had decided to press ahead with the task of delivering a short list of candidates to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created when Justice Michel Bastarache stepped down in June because of health problems.

Comartin said the panel has set a timetable of mid-to late September for making its recommendations to Harper.

He declined to go into further detail, saying members had concluded a new confidentiality agreement that will make Ablonczy, as committee chair, the sole spokesperson from now on.

Ablonczy could not be reached for comment, and a spokeswoman said only that the minister considered the outcome of the meeting "very positive."

Dominic LeBlanc, the Liberal member of the panel, has had nothing to say on the subject since the dispute first surfaced. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson

made it clear this week that he had no intention of backing down on the point.

"Ultimately, the appointment of a Supreme Court justice is a function of the executive," said Nicholson.

"We've put this process in place and we have the right to name some individuals . . . We're not providing a veto to the Bloc or the NDP on these things."

Under the Constitution, appointments to the Supreme Court are the sole responsibility of the prime minister. But Nicholson announced last spring the government would set up the special committee of MPs to play an advisory role in the process.

On Tuesday, the government handed over a preliminary list of candidates it had compiled on its own. The job of the parliamentary penal will be to shorten the list to three names, from which Harper will make the ultimate choice.

Nicholson is hoping to have the new judge in place by the time the court begins its fall term in early October, but has made no promises on that score.