Apart from the law 96 on French, the only other not Trumpian and properly Quebecois subject to have been addressed during this federal campaign is that of the appointment of judges.
Okay, this question does not raise passions in our buses. However, it constitutes a fundamental problem, a “vice of Dominion”.
On April 8, the Legault government filed an important motion, which will be debated next week at the Assnat. The latter claims a modification to the Constitution aimed at clarifying this: that now, the judges of the superior prices and the appeal of Quebec are chosen from the names “recommended by the Government of Quebec”.
Currently, only judges of so -called “lower” courses (Court of Quebec, administrative housing, work courts, etc.) are appointed by Quebec.
For senior and appeal courses, it is the government in Ottawa which unilaterally appoints the judges. It is an “anachronistic vestige of federal centralization”, as a commission led by the federalists Pépin and Robarts said in 1979.
Exaggeration
But for two retired judges, Jacques Chamberland (formerly of the court of appeal) and Daniel W. Payette (former of the Superior Court), it would especially be necessary to change anything.
On Sunday, they denounced on our website, with exaggerations, the Quebec initiative. According to them, wanting the federated state that Quebec has more weight in the appointment of the judges of the Supreme Court of Quebec and the Court of Appeal of Quebec would be a “very poorly won judicial”. Worse still, the motion would underpin that these higher courts are “illegitimate” when it comes to “slicing causes of civil law or even worse, to control the legality of the laws adopted by Quebec”.
• Also look at this video podcast from the Benoit Dutrizac show, broadcast on QUB platforms and simultaneously on the 99.5 FM Montreal:
Federative deficit
Our two former magistrates seem to refuse to see the serious problem however denounced by multiple experts: our mode of appointment contravenes the principles of federalism, which is admirably demonstrated in the Proulx-Rousseau report deposited last fall.
For example, our superior courses cut constitutional disputes between the provinces and Ottawa. But it is Ottawa who appoints the arbitrator, systematically.
To illustrate the problem, imagine that, in the hockey playoffs, the leaders of a team would always designate those who will wear the striped vest. Questions about their decisions would inevitably arise.
As we ask questions, for example, about the famous judgments of the 1980s which endorsed the constitutional coup of Pe Trudeau, who had appointed almost all judges (including his former adviser constituted!).
Supporter
Today, the mode of federal appointment is much less impermeable to partisanry than that of Quebec. Many journalists’ surveys have, for 10 years, have proven the political interference of the PLC in the appointments to the magistracy.
A study by law professor Guillaume Rousseau, of the University of Sherbrooke, of which The newspaper Published the results last year, demonstrated that the judges appointed by Justin Trudeau since 2016 tended to produce “Trudeauist” judgments.
