Even though the requests for recusal affecting him “are completely devoid of merit” in his eyes, Justice Mahmud Jamal of the Supreme Court of Canada is complying with the demands of the Quebec government and will not examine the case surrounding Bill 21, it has been learned The duty.
The final instance judge, who had been asked to withdraw from the application for leave to appeal concerning the State Secularism Act due to appearances of “bias”, warned the parties concerned of his intentions on Tuesday. “In order to avoid his participation in the proceedings being a source of distraction, Justice Jamal has decided not to take part in them,” reads a letter sent by the Registrar of the Supreme Court, and whose The duty got copy.
Last week, the Attorney General of Quebec demanded that Judge Jamal recuse himself because of his past ties to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), which in April asked the Court to allow it to appeal Quebec’s religious neutrality law. A week earlier, the Mouvement laïque québécois (MLQ) led the way by raising allegations of bias.
Judge Jamal’s decision to recuse himself, however, is not because he accepts their legal argument. In the letter sent by the registrar on Tuesday, he strongly disagrees with the parties who requested his recusal. “The allegations of actual bias made by some parties are completely without merit. Nor is there any reasonable apprehension of bias,” the letter states, quoting the judge.
In fact, Judge Jamal said, there “is no proper legal basis for his recusal.” “A reasonable and right-thinking person, asking himself the question, making the necessary inquiries about it, and considering the matter in depth, realistically and practically, would not come to the conclusion that, in all likelihood, he would not render a just decision,” the letter sent Tuesday reads.
Request from the prosecutor
Last week, Quebec Attorney General Simon Jolin-Barrette expressed deep unease over the involvement in the case of Judge Jamal, who sat on the board of directors of the ACLC until 2019, partly as president.
“A reasonable and well-informed person would be concerned that Judge Jamal lacks the impartiality required to hear this case,” he wrote.
A week earlier, the MLQ had also expressed a “serious and reasonable fear of bias due to the fact that Judge Jamal could not shake off the manifest and unfavourable prejudice that he maintained against Quebec’s laws regarding the religious neutrality of the State.”
Before recusing himself, the magistrate had persisted in saying that there was, in his participation in the case, “no real conflict of interest”. [Le juge] was at no time a solicitor of record in the proceedings giving rise to this application for leave to appeal and has no recollection of having provided any legal advice in the course of these proceedings,” the Supreme Court wrote in a communication with the groups involved at the end of June.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, along with student Ichrak Nourel Hak and the National Council of Canadian Muslims, is among those challenging the most recent decision of the Quebec Court of Appeal on Bill 21. In this judgment, rendered in February, the court of second instance validated almost all of the provisions of the law on religious neutrality.