Stephen Taylor

I really think that Stephen Harper is reaching out past the 36% of voters that gave him a minority mandate on January 23rd. Those who know him say that he’s all about the long game and that while he’s a “policy wonk”, he calculates each move.

Ladies and Gentlemen, with this novel approach to appointing the Supreme Court, while Harper is not changing the process constitutionally, he is certainly adding more transparency to the process. This is the same kind of transparency that the Conservatives campaigned on during the brutally long winter election and it’s the same transparency that a recent poll described as the #1 issue of Canadians post-election.

Of course, I assume that our knee-jerk NDP friends will decry that we’re “spiraling towards an American system”. Whether it trends towards an American system, English system, French system or Japanese system, I don’t care because it seems that a system that encourages transparency would be very important to the NDP (especially since they campaigned on “Ed Broadbent’s 7 point plan for saving Parliament and making waffles”)

We’ll see if the NDP wants to “make Parliament work” for “working people” or will we see the NDP resist a change which would take the SCC appointments from a secretive elite process to one that all Canadians can access. If they resist against the process, we’ll know that it’s partisan because it certainly shouldn’t represent their principles. Hopefully we won’t be seeing a lot of NDP motions trying to block this novel transparent process.

The Liberals should be pretty much on board. I saw on clip on CPAC that interviewed the former Justice Minister by phone and he pretty much endorsed the whole process. It’ll be difficult for the Liberals to oppose the process. They aren’t even likely to oppose the nominee either since they drafted the short-list of nominees.

Hopefully this is one step of many where the Prime Minister makes the Parliamentary process (and PMO power) more transparent for all Canadians.

UPDATE: Here is the list of members on the ad-hoc committee:
CPC
Vic Toews – chair
Diane Ablonczy
Daryl Kramp
Daniel Petit
Rob Moore

LPC
Sue Barnes
Hon. Irwin Cotler
Anita Neville
Hon. Stephen Owen

Bloc
Real Menard
Carole Freeman

NDP
Joe Comartin

“The nominee that we put forward will be satisfactory to the government. Judicial temperament means, in my view, that when someone’s a judge, they’re prepared to apply the law rather than make it and that they apply it in a way that uses common sense and discretion without being inventive.” — Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada

In his continued efforts to make a case for a majority government to the people of Canada, Stephen Harper announced today that he will make the appointment process of Supreme Court justices more transparent.

The Judicial Survivor will be immune to even the most partisan criticism during the process as the short-list of candidates was submitted by the previous Liberal government. Is this a mollifying gesture by the PM to gain more trust among those electors who may yet hand him a stronger mandate?

The process continues in the evolving tradition of the Conservative Party’s consultatively autarchic approach to PMO power. (Senate elections to follow?)

A parliamentary committee will be formed consisting of twelve Members of Parliament submitted by Wednesday (no party shall form a majority on committee). The committee will be free to ask questions of the nominees and the public will be free to watch the proceedings (and submit questions and concerns to MPs).

While the Prime Minister ultimately has the final say, Mr. Harper is opening the process (and ultimately his decision) to public scrutiny. Within the framework of our current political system, this is a good step towards reform.