Prominent British Columbia social activist Kari Simpson—a spokesperson for you, if you believe, like most civil-minded Canadians, that conventional morality creates and protects social harmony—has written to Prime Minister Harper, asking him to provide the leadership his office demands, in protecting all Canadians’ freedom of expression, and their right to a fair and impartial hearing in our courts. In her letter, she draws to the Prime Minister’s attention, in what RoadKillRadio is calling Drive for Justice, some egregious violations of those rights.
In a defamation lawsuit that worked its way through the BC Supreme Court, the BC Court of Appeals, and finally to the Supreme Court of Canada, those rights were repeatedly violated… with the knowledge and complicity of other judges and lawyers.
Her questions include:
A judge of the BC Supreme Court—who has admitted financially supporting her “spouse” while he was using the Internet for (among other things) promoting hatred and contempt for Jews generally; and vilifying, defaming and libeling several prominent Jewish businessmen—at the same time, this same judge, presided over a defamation suit that involves a high-profile former lawyer—you know: a member of the legal “brethren”—a former MLA and provincial Cabinet Minister, and a member of the media who has publicly stated that he does not want influential Judeo-Christians (as the plaintiff is) to hold public office.
If that judge also transfers property title from her “spouse” to herself, so he escapes payment of a court-awarded judgement after he was found to have defamed the Jewish businessmen, isn’t that called “fraudulent conveyance”? And doesn’t that vitiate the protection afforded judges, which they have only as long as they are “of good behaviour”, according to the Constitution Act?
Question 1 – Don’t the ethical standards of the Canadian Judicial Council require that a judge, when personally embroiled in such conflicts, must disqualify herself from a case that is similar in fact—i.e., defamation involving religious bigotry?
Question 2 – Should the Chief Justice of the BC Supreme Court, also a member of the Canadian Judicial Council, preside over a legal matter involving one of his own judges?
Question 3 – Doesn’t a party to a legal proceeding have the right to know what legal test they have to meet in court? If the Supreme Court of Canada changes the legal test in mid-trial, as Chief Justice McLachlin did in this case, isn’t there a obligation to allow the parties to the trial to re-state their case, incorporating the new standard?
Question 4 – What gives justices of the high court the right to repeat lies that defame an individual, and to embellish them, as happened in this case?
Question 5 – How can the Canadian Judicial Council be trusted to investigate its own activities? How can the legal “brethren” be trusted to sit in judgement of their own activities?
But the most important question of all in Mrs. Simpson’s letter to the Prime Minister is this:
Will you call for a parliamentary enquiry into this evidence of judicial corruption and mocking of the Rule of Law?
When judicial independence is abused to protect those who violate judicial probity, there must be a venue of appeal and accountability beyond the courts themselves; that is the essence of our Drive for Justice. There is a famous precedent in Canadian law: in 1929, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that women were not “persons” in law. Five spunky women from Alberta appealed that ruling to the Privy Council at Westminster, which at that time had authority to review Supreme Court decisions; Canadians lost that right of appeal in 1947, and it has never been replaced. The loss of that right—to appeal to a body that is accountable to the Constitution—was a deficiency in Prime Minister Trudeau’s 1982 Constitution Act. That deficiency still needs to be corrected today.
Will the Prime Minister act to protect the integrity of the judicial system and the confidence of the Canadian people in the administration of law?
Stay tuned.