Meanwhile, the Liberals are using their plan it as a “political chip” as Bédard-Rubin calls it, part of a political strategy to paint the Conservatives as soft on bilingualism.바카라사이트

 

Trudeau challenged Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole outright in the Commons two weeks ago to commit to naming only bilingual judges on the top court, claiming Conservatives do “not support bilingualism in Canada.”

 

Conservative justice critic Rob Moore declined an interview request but in an email said, “Conservatives expect appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada are based on competency and legal excellence. Bilingualism or a commitment to learn or improve one’s French will also be a key principle in appointments to the Supreme Court for a future Conservative government.”

 

The NDP and the Bloc Québécois have long called for bilingual Supreme Court judges.

 

It’s not clear if the latest proposal will come to pass before a federal election, whenever it comes.They analyzed cases from 1969 to 2013. In an interview, he said, “There tends to be a linguistic separation of labour at the Supreme Court.”

 

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Despite access to interpreters and translation, anglophone judges “will sit more and write more in cases argued in English and francophone judges will sit more and write more on cases argued in French. And this is regardless of their areas of expertise,” he said. Unilingual judges are less assertive on cases argued in another language and litigants “might lose that expertise” where unilingual judges stand down or just “go with the flow.”

 

“The general picture that emerges is that language proficiency superimposes itself as another kind of legal specialization in the inner-working of the court,” he wrote.

 

There’s another twist. Some legal scholars suspect that the Liberals are trying to do through a back door (via the Official Languages Act) what they may not be able to do through the front door (via the Supreme Court Act): that is, rewrite the eligibility rules for judges. That’s because in 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Parliament “cannot unilaterally modify the composition or other essential features of the court,” saying it requires a constitutional amendment.

 

Gerard Kennedy, assistant professor in the faculty of law at the University of Manitoba, said it’s debatable whether making bilingualism mandatory is the kind of “essential” characteristic that is protected by the Constitution. And if the Liberals took that route, he said it would quickly become very divisive. “By amending the Official Languages Act, it draws less attention to it.”온라인카지노

 

But the government seems to have allowed itself some wiggle room — at least for the next appointment. There is one Ontario vacancy coming open on July 1, and another one within two years when Michael Moldaver will turn 75.

 

The languages law reform document states in drafting the change, the government is weighing the appointment of Indigenous judges to the Supreme Court of Canada along with case law on the court’s “composition and eligibility criteria.”

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, the Liberals are using their plan it as a “political chip” as Bédard-Rubin calls it, part of a political strategy to paint the Conservatives as soft on bilingualism.

 

Trudeau challenged Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole outright in the Commons two weeks ago to commit to naming only bilingual judges on the top court, claiming Conservatives do “not support bilingualism in Canada.”

 

Conservative justice critic Rob Moore declined an interview request but in an email said, “Conservatives expect appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada are based on competency and legal excellence. Bilingualism or a commitment to learn or improve one’s French will also be a key principle in appointments to the Supreme Court for a future Conservative government.”

 

The NDP and the Bloc Québécois have long called for bilingual Supreme Court judges.

 

It’s not clear if the latest proposal will come to pass before a federal election, whenever it comes.