Despite the protests of many, the Chief Justice of the Court of Quebec, Lucie Rondeau, persists and signs: she can intervene in the process of selecting judges for the Court of Quebec by having, if such is her opinion, add to the opinions. of competitions for certain posts of judge the requirement of the command of English. The requirement, in fact, to be bilingual.
Alleging the non-respect of the rule of separation of powers by the Minister of Justice, the Chief Justice dragged the latter to the Superior Court of Quebec to annul three notices of competition that do not contain, an illegal omission according to her. , the requirement of candidates’ bilingualism, as she had requested. This exceptional court proceeding by a chief justice was served in November.
The judges of the Court of Quebec are appointed by the government of Quebec. Under the Courts of Justice Act, the government of Quebec adopted in 2012 the Regulation respecting the procedure for selecting candidates for the office of judge of the Court of Quebec (the Regulation).
The Rules authorize the Minister of Justice to form a selection committee to assess the suitability of candidates for the office of judge and to provide him with an opinion on them. To do this, the selection committee must apply the criteria set out in Article 25 of the Rules. The committee reports to the Minister by proposing three suitable candidates for appointment as judges in order to enable him to make a recommendation to the Council of Ministers for appointment to the post which is the subject of the competition.
The introductory paragraph of Article 25 is very clear: “To assess the candidacy of a candidate, the committee takes into account the following criteria”, criteria which are listed in paragraphs 1 ° to 6 °, including:
“1 ° the candidate’s skills, including: a) his personal and intellectual qualities, his integrity, his knowledge and his general experience; b) the degree of his legal knowledge and experience in the areas of law in which he would be called upon to perform his duties; vs) […]. The other criteria are not in issue in the dispute.
Three observations
1. Nowhere in Article 25 does it say that the selection committee must apply to the candidates a criterion of bilingualism or, in other words, that fluency in the English language is required and must be taken into account by the committee. Selection.
2. Neither the Chief Justice nor the Minister may require the committee to take into account criteria other than those listed.
3. If the government had wanted to introduce the criterion of bilingualism in the selection process and had wanted the selection committee to take it into account, it is in this section of the Regulations that it would have included it.
But, then, you will say to me, where is the problem? The problem stems from a small phrase found in Article 7 of the Rules, in the section entitled “Notice of vacant position”:
“7. When a judge must be appointed and after having taken into consideration the needs expressed by the Chief Justice of the Court of Quebec […], the secretary opens, at the minister’s request, a competition and publishes […] a notice inviting interested persons to submit their candidacy ”(my emphasis).
Chief Justice Rondeau interprets this text in her very particular way, namely that the words “and after having taken into consideration the needs expressed by the Chief Justice” would mean that at her sole discretion she may have them entered in the Notice of competition that candidates must have a command of the English language, that is to say, in plain language, that they are bilingual.
Is this the meaning to be given to the word “needs”? Would this not, in doing so, add a criterion to those already provided for in section 25 of the Rules and which the selection committee must take into account?
However, we can give the word “needs” a very real meaning and, above all, very different from that given to it by the Chief Justice.
Indeed, these “needs expressed” by the Chief Justice for her Court, would it not be:
1. Tell the secretary how many judges she needs to fill vacancies due to retirement, death, illness or to respond to the increased volume of cases in a given district?
2. to indicate in which chamber the position is open: civil, criminal or youth?
3. make known in which judicial district the post is open and what will be the place of residence of the judge to be appointed?
These are the three “needs” of the Court that the Chief Justice can express, as provided for in Article 7 of the Rules, and that she is the only one who can make known to the secretary for the selection of candidates for the office of judge. so that it advertises them in competition notices. This is how each opinion published by the secretary will express the concrete needs of the Chief Justice.