OTTAWA -- The federal government is firing its judicial advisory committees and creating new ones in a bid to bring greater diversity to the bench in Canada, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould announced in a press release Thursday.
That includes eliminating the law enforcement representative the previous Conservative government added in 2006, and restoring voting rights to judicial members of the committees, the release said. The new process will also reintroduce the "highly recommended" category to allow the committees to flag particularly strong candidates.
The restructuring was announced as Wilson-Raybould appointed 24 new judges to fill just over half of the vacancies accumulated since the Liberals took office last fall. Even Beverley McLachlin, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, indicated her concern over the number of vacancies, telling the Canadian Bar Association last August that she was concerned about the 44 unfilled posts restricting access to justice by slowing down the court process – a number the Conservatives say climbed this month to 61 before the prime minister appointed a new Supreme Court justice.
"There is something deeply wrong with a hiring scheme that repeatedly proves itself incapable of foreseeing, preparing for and filling vacancies as they arise," McLachlin said in Ottawa last summer, noting it was a problem under governments of all political stripes.
The new appointments include 14 women and two indigenous judges. They were vetted under the previous process, Wilson-Raybould said following question period Thursday.
Earlier, on her way into the House, Wilson-Raybould said the new committees are to assess applications with an eye to diversity. The justice minister said she's accepting applications for the new judicial advisory committees until Nov. 17.
Currently, there is at least one judicial advisory committee per province and territory, with more depending on the population. Each committee had eight members representing the bench, the bar, the law enforcement community and the general public, according to the organization’s website. Each also had one non-voting member from Federal Judicial Affairs Canada, which supports the work of judges and of the appointments committees.
Want to reflect diversity: minister
Under the new system Wilson-Raybould announced Thursday, she will nominate three members of the public per seven-person committee, with the provincial law society, bar association and attorney general each nominating their own representative. The province's chief justice will nominate another member.
"We’re committed to having a judiciary across the country that reflects the diversity of the country," the justice minister said.
That means letting applicants self-identify as indigenous or a member of a minority group, she said.
"We're also ensuring that the judicial advisory committee members are provided with training to understand and appreciate diversity, to understand the realities that may exist in terms of implicit bias, and understand how to assess meritorious candidates."
Changes like that are too minor to account for the delay in filling dozens of posts, said Michael Cooper, the Conservatives' deputy justice critic.
"As a result of the minister's inaction, serious criminal cases were thrown out of court, including serious fraud cases and of course most recently the most serious case under the Criminal Code, a first degree murder case," he said.
Wilson-Raybould "failed to perform a core function of her responsibilities as minister of justice, and that is to ensure the proper functioning of the administration of justice."
Cooper said he's disappointed the committees will no longer include police officers.
"The minister, in terms of the judicial advisory committees, has recognized that there needs to be a diverse range of opinions and perspectives," he said. "It seems that the only perspective she doesn't want is that of police officers."
The president of the Canadian Bar Association welcomed some of the changes, but didn't mention the removal of the law enforcement representative.
The CBA is happy the committee makeup "has been rebalanced so that the majority of members will be independent of the government," Rene Basque said in a statement.
"We applaud the government’s commitment to collect and publish statistical information on judicial applicants and appointees. A growing number of lawyers are women and members of racialized and other minority groups. Yet their numbers are not reflected on the courts. Open data is a good first step to diversity."
Basque also urged the government to quickly fill the remaining vacancies.
