Canada's Supreme Court goes crazy on Young Offender rules...

Plus Minister Gary, Bonnie's troubles and competing conventions.

This newsletter is brought to you by Proton VPN, get deep discounts with my special code.

Our courts are a mess, and it will take a long time and a lot of effort to turn them around. At some point, Conservatives are going to have to start taking judicial appointments seriously and begin to ensure those they appoint to the bench aren’t crazy.

A just released decision that I’m writing about in the Toronto Sun will make it nearly impossible to hand down adult sentences to young offenders.

Most of the judges ruling on this were appointed by Justin Trudeau, but two of those siding with the majority in the 7-2 ruling were appointed by Stephen Harper including Chief Justice Richard Wagner. The appointment of Wagner to the Supreme Court, later elevated to Chief Justice by Trudeau, may have been Harper’s worst appointment ever.

That’s saying something because while I generally supported much of what Harper did as PM and think he was a very good leader for our country, his appointments were often awful. I’m told by some who were close to him that he didn’t care much about appointments, judicial or otherwise.

I don’t know about that, I’ve never asked Harper about this, but Wagner appointment was a spectacularly bad decision.

Before being appointed to the Supreme Court, Wagner was a member of the Quebec Court of Appeal which sided with the Quebec government rule that required Loyola, a Catholic high school in Montreal to deny Catholic teaching and teach religion from a non-Catholic perspective. The judgment was an utter disaster, a horribly written piece of jurisprudence and was destined to be overturned.

Which it was in a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court which Wagner did not participate in.

That’s how bad this decision was, all of his colleagues said it had to be overturned, but Harper still appointed him to the Supreme Court. Now Wagner is busy trying to remake the court in his image with a bust of him showing up in the court and a refusal to say who paid for it and the decision, by Wagner, to end the practice of judges wearing red robes.

Strangely, his motto as Chief Justice is “Le passé inspire l'avenir” which translates to “The past inspires the future.” He seems to want to jettison the past in terms of traditions and jurisprudence and chart a course more in line with his “progressive” world view.

At the heart of my issue with Wagner is that he makes bad decisions. I may not disagree with all of them, but I disagree with enough of them.

This latest decision, which he concurred with is another disaster, but this time there is no way to overturn it unless the notwithstanding clause were to be used which the current government will never do.

The real problem…

The language passed by Parliament is pretty clear, if the Crown asks for an adult sentence, the legislation states that the court must be “satisfied” that the two part test to rebut the idea that young offenders have a lower moral culpability has been met. Now, thanks to Wagner and Justice Nicholas Kasirer, who wrote the majority decision, the judge doesn’t just need to be “satisfied” but the Crown must prove their case for an adult sentence “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Yes, you can get convictions on such a standard but saying you need this standard for an adult sentence will effectively make it impossible to meet.

This was a political decision by mostly, but not all, Trudeau court appointees.

A bright light in the darkness...

Justice Suzanne Côté is one of Harper’s better appointments – he has a few including Justices Rothstein, Moldaver, and Brown to name a few – but Côté is still on the bench and standing out.

She wrote the dissent in this case that changed how adult sentences can be given to young offenders and asked why her colleagues were explicitly overturning the will of Parliament.

"The record makes plain that Parliament expressly considered — and even studied — the possibility of imposing proof beyond a reasonable doubt but ultimately opted against it. It was not a mere omission. It was a legislative choice that should be considered and respected, not dismissed nor discounted," she wrote.

Too many judges believe that they know better than the elected officials who passed the laws, and quite frankly want to usurp the powers of those elected officials. Justice Côté doesn’t do that, and we need more judges like her on the bench and few like Wagner, who is an embarrassment.

Secure your data from big tech and big government, exclusive discounts for my audience.

A Public Safety Minister who can’t deal with terrorism...

We are back to the problems of Minister Gary, the man in charge of the terror list who cannot deal with the terror list of those groups or people banned by it.

As I wrote in a recent Sun column, the guy just can’t stay in this position as Public Safety Minister, he has to go.

I honestly wouldn’t have an issue with him being in a position that didn’t deal with the terror watch list or public safety, but he can’t hold this position. Of course, if you can’t be trusted with public safety, can you be trusted in cabinet at all?

It’s a valid question.

As noted in the column:

There are already rumours of a Carney cabinet shuffle in the works for this fall.

Multiple sources are saying the new PM is looking for competent people to place in cabinet rather than leave Trudeau wannabes hanging around. Among the names supposedly on the chopping block are Chrystia Freeland, Steven Guilbeault, Melanie Joly and others.

And if those names go, then Minister Gary has to go as well.

Bonnie getting his from her left flank...

Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie continues to be punished for trying to bring her party back to the centre. For the last decade the Ontario Liberals have tried the same plan as the Trudeau Liberals – try to outflank the NDP on the left.

It hasn’t worked out well for them and now they have a leader who says she wants to come back to the centre – maybe even centre-right on fiscal issues – and she’s getting attacked.

I published a piece on Thursday about the attack Bonnie is feeling and the showdown at the looming convention in September.

There are some legitimate concerns and complaints about Crombie’s leadership and some trumped up ones. Her main challenger though is former Liberal MP and former cabinet minister for a cup of coffee Nathaniel Erskine-Smith.

Erskine-Smith is known mainly as a maverick within the Liberals, which is great unless you are trying to be a leader. As I said in my column, how can you lead a caucus if you can’t be in one.

This is the strangest leadership bid I’ve ever seen.

Get the podcast mic that I trust and use, the Shure MV7+ with XLR and USB C.

Speaking of conventions...

The Ontario PC Party has announced that they will hold their convention on the same weekend in January/February as the Conservative Party of Canada.

Bizarrely, this is being seen as some kind of attack by Doug Ford on Pierre Poilievre which is the exact opposite reaction than what I had.

Here’s the thing, there are people who are members of both parties and some like Poilievre’s style better, some like Ford’s. If you are a Ford booster, chances are slim that you are going to Calgary in the middle of winter at the end of January, to try and organize to unseat Poilievre.

The Conservatives chose Calgary in the middle of winter for a reason; it helps Pierre with his chances of getting a really good showing and Ford’s decision to hold his convention at the same time helps that. There are still too many federal Conservatives who want to hate Ford and anyone who isn’t 100% in line with them.

That’s a foolish position to take.

As I have been pointing out for years, politics is a game of addition and not subtraction. Pushing away people you mostly agree with is a recipe for disaster.

“The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally - not a 20 percent traitor,” Ronald Regan famously said.

Too many federal Conservative supporters in their online statements seem to believe in the 20% traitor view. If you want to win, you need to change that.