Finally, we arrive at the final. Someone will get the cut eventually. We will know who is leading in this country: the elected representatives of the National Assembly, using the rules that were imposed on them in 1982 by the rest of the country and Queen Elizabeth II in person, or judges who have been convinced to change these rules during the game and a posteriori to declare null and void the goals scored by the Alain Côté of Quebec, these cuckolds of the Constitution?
At the end of February, in the semi-final, things were looking good.
Three judges of the Quebec Court of Appeal then declared that they knew how to read, and that the fundamental text of the country stipulates in full that a parliamentary assembly has the right, as it wishes, to use the override provision. to make your own arbitration between collective rights and individual rights. When it does, their judgment thundered, the magistrates have no other choice but to accept the democratic prerogative. And to keep quiet.
It would be so beautiful. On the contrary, speak, speak, implore the opponents of secularism and legislative power to the judges of the Supreme Court, whom they wish to break from their silence to lay down completely new law – law which would crush tyranny of the Quebec parliamentary majority to replace it with, well, the tyranny of nine judges.
Why do defenders of the right of teachers to wear misogynistic religious symbols in front of their students, why do these apostles of the absolute power of unelected judges have reason to hope?
Firstly because the judges do not come from the thigh of Jupiter. They came out of the Prime Minister’s thigh. And it changes everything to know which prime minister they come from. The constitutionalist Guillaume Rousseau measured the Trudeauist bias of judges. In a little book published a month ago, The thoughts of the Trudeaus, Quebec and the judicial power (published by the Quebec Research Institute), he examined the traces left behind by the magistrates: their decisions. He chose the most important subjects of Trudeauist thought: a propensity for symmetrical bilingualism, for multiculturalism, for the primacy of individual rights, for a central state and a strong judicial power. An aversion to anything that goes in the opposite direction.
To find out if the judges appointed by the Trudeau dynasty are faithful to the precepts of their fathers – because escape is always possible – Rousseau and his researcher Sébastien Bouthillier searched around thirty judgments rendered on these crucial issues. In total, these judges fall on the right side of Trudeauism 6 times out of 10. When it comes to individual rights – the subject that concerns us – it is 7 times out of 10.
How many of the three judges of the Court of Appeal who ruled for the right of the Assembly to assert its parliamentary sovereignty, how many had been appointed by a Trudeau? Zero. And how many among the nine supreme? Six.
The zealots of the Autonomous Teachers’ Federation, the National Council of Canadian Muslims (CNMC) and the English Montreal School Board have another reason to hope to win at the top of the Canadian judicial system. The judges do not live in an Olympus of pure thought (reminder: we stay with the metaphor of the Greek gods), but in the real country. They hear the scholarly arguments presented before them, of course, but also know how to gauge the spirit of the times.
In the federal parliament, all political parties (except the Bloc Québécois) – and in particular the attorney general of the Trudeau government – are urging them to tighten the legal grip on the elected representatives of the National Assembly, these applicants incapable of making a lucid judgment on their society. Of course, their decisions are subject to electoral testing every four years. Certainly, when they use the override provision, they must reiterate it every five years, and therefore after a possible change of government. But, hey, they didn’t all do their law. Importantly, they are not members of the Lord Reading Association.
Who is it ? An influential brotherhood of Montreal jurists, fiercely opposed to Bill 21 and which attracts the judges of the Supreme Court like honey, Winnie the Pooh. The late Frédéric Bastien told us that two judges of the Supreme Court, who have since left him, were to address members of Lord Reading in February 2020, during a fundraising event sponsored in particular by a firm representing the CNMC in the contestation of law 21. Frédéric’s intervention had spoiled the event, which was canceled despite the interest it aroused.
“How can two judges of the Supreme Court, in such a context, help finance Lord Reading and claim to be neutral and impartial in the decisions they will have to make? » he asked. “Would it ever occur to the judges to agree to give a conference organized by the Secular Movement with the aim of helping it finance itself? »
He also raised the case of Judge Nicholas Kasirer, still in office and appointed by Trudeau to the Supreme Court after Lord Reading, of which he was a member, had submitted a brief to the National Assembly challenging not only Bill 21, but also use of the notwithstanding provision.
Here is now the list of Supreme Court judges who were associated with groups defending secularism and parliamentary sovereignty provided for by the override clause. Wait, I’m looking… I must have misplaced it. I miss space. As soon as I find it, I’ll let you know.