After having canceled several competitions of judges for obscure reasons, Simon Jolin-Barrette starts another small war with the chief judge of the Court of Quebec.
Does the Minister of Justice of Quebec understand what the independence of the judiciary means? Or has he simply developed a personal hostility towards Judge Lucie Rondeau, so that everything is a pretext for conflict?
The attorneys general who preceded him often had clashes and experienced tensions. But never has an Attorney General of Quebec had such rotten relations with the judiciary.
One of the fundamental roles of the Attorney General is to defend the independence of the courts. He is supposed to be above the political fray in his government, even with a somewhat special status.
The last incident, therefore: Simon Jolin-Barrette wants to reform the mode of financing of the Council of the magistrature. Instead of having a discretionary budget, the minister proposes that specific appropriations be voted annually for his activities.
The Council deals with the training of judges of the Court of Québec and their discipline. Last year, he spent 4.6 million instead of the planned 3.2 million. The cause of this deficit: lavish lawyer’s fees incurred for a case opposing him to the government.
The Minister has good arguments for setting a budget for the Council. The federal government works that way – through the Commissioner for the Judiciary, who lays out the Council’s demands and gets the budget without discussion.
That is not the question.
The problem is that the Minister does not even want to hear the main interested party, or let’s say rather: the main target, Judge Rondeau. As Chief Justice, she is however President of the Council. Ultimately responsible for the budget. It is as if, by law, we were changing the method of funding the Musée du Québec, but we did not even want to hear from its director.
PHOTO ANDRÉ PICHETTE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
The Chief Justice of the Court of Quebec, Lucie Rondeau
Obviously that doesn’t make any sense.
This all comes just days after the Chief Justice and the Minister reached an agreement to end their frankly embarrassing trial over how many judges are needed and how many hours they have to sit. Thanks to the good offices of mediator of judge Jacques Chamberland, the two made a compromise.
So everything was settled, right? Of course not.
In the context, the Council’s budgetary reform looks less like sound management of public funds than political revenge. The refusal to even hear the judge confirms this.
Judges do not levy taxes and rely on the executive to fund their operations. An independent remuneration committee recommends adjustments to their salary every three years. But the rest is in the hands of the government, basically. Their independence, if it is not defended by the one who is supposed to protect it in the government, is weakened.
Meanwhile, we learn that the minister has canceled a selection competition for judges in Sept-Îles, without anyone understanding why. A new competition took place, and it was a young candidate from Longueuil who was appointed to the court’s youth chamber. A candidate who has experience in youth law, but is not from the region, and therefore unfamiliar with local realities – particularly indigenous ones.
However, according to several sources, at least one highly qualified local candidate had been selected. The minister hides behind the confidentiality of the process to give no explanation. The regulations allow the Minister of Justice to cancel a competition “in the interest of justice”. One thinks of a lack of applications or the discovery of troubling facts about a selected candidate. But here ?
On the North Shore, the legal community is very upset and does not understand what happened other than as a coup de force.
If there is one thing that is working well, in any case much better than before, it is the process for appointing judges to the Court of Quebec. An independent committee of five people – a judge appointed by the Chief Justice, two lawyers appointed by the Bar and two other people appointed by the Office des professions.
A list of up to three names of the best candidates is drawn up. Sometimes it’s just one name, which usually doesn’t sit well with politicians, but usually the appointment takes place.
There again, the minister wants to change this system, resulting from the Bastarache commission, which cleaned up and depoliticized the process and put an end to the “post-its”.
Committees must register three names, regardless of their qualifications. Sometimes there are very few applicants for certain positions. What is the point of evaluating them if we fill in three boxes by default?
The chief judge will no longer be allowed to sit on this committee, and a judge will be prohibited from sitting more than once a year on these committees. It will only complicate this repetitive work.
The composition of the committees will be modified to include a representative of the victims. In itself, this is not bad. But why this group and not others?
The judiciary is worried about these changes, which seem to them a clear step backwards. Associations of lawyers see it as an attack on the independence of the judiciary. The Quebec Association of Defense Lawyers and the provincial bars have denounced it.
This minister is more and more challenged, isolated in the middle.
However, there are a lot of things to redress in court without creating false problems by undoing real solutions. Without restarting a small war.