Unlike the U.S., Canada does not do spectacle when it comes to picking Supreme Court judges – By National Post Staff (National Post) / Oct 12 2020
‘We’re slightly less political in our orientation. People here aren’t appointed because they represent a certain point of view’
Picking Supreme Court judges is never like this in Canada.
Historically, it has involved a phone call from the prime minister, announcing the decision is already made, sometimes on the advice of an all-party committee, sometimes just on a quiet nod from governing party mandarins.
In 2016, the Liberal government created an independent advisory panel to select candidates from eligible judges and lawyers, in an effort to bring long-promised transparency to the opaque process. Scandal is uncommon, and even when it does occur, no one gets “Borked,” as in the American slang for a campaign of public vilification to disrupt a confirmation process, named for a failed 1987 Supreme Court nominee.
What Canada does not do, by design, is make replacing judges into a grand partisan spectacle, like the haunted garden party that appears to have been a super-spreader event for the COVID-19 outbreak at the White House, just weeks before the presidential election.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Bill Clinton nominee, seemed to loom from another realm over those gathered, maskless, to fete her nominated replacement, Amy Coney Barrett. By dying of pancreatic cancer aged 87, the liberal jurist and feminist icon had created an opportunity for President Donald Trump to shift the balance in the scales of justice, the long game of American politics.
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