I don't envy
opposition leader Stephen Harper his job one bit. Day in and day out
he has to deal with brainwashed Real Canadians.
And now, just as
they were almost starting to like him, he's gone and upset Real
Canadians again (i.e. our governing class in Toronto, Montreal and
Ottawa) by telling the truth.
Real Canada
doesn't like the truth. It prefers mythology--such as the myth that
Canada is a functioning democracy with an impartial judiciary.
He was commenting
last Thursday about the Liberals taking the extraordinary step of
trying to pass their new gay marriage law in the Supreme Court before
trying to pass it in Parliament.
Harper said this
is the final play in a long cabinet strategy to use the courts to
circumvent democracy on a controversial issue. "They [the
government] had the courts do it for them," he said, "they
put the judges in they wanted, then they failed to appeal, failed to
fight the case in court."
For this he was
widely derided in the East as paranoid, delusional, spiteful,
extreme, and (ugh) western.
We might note,
however, that all the points Harper made are factual. The federal
cabinet actually is asking the courts to legislate this matter ahead
of Parliament. It has not appealed the pivotal Ontario marriage case,
and is even opposing the right of others to appeal it.
It is also a fact
that the federal cabinet chooses the judges it wants. True, we don't
know how they assess candidates politically, because the process is
totally secret. All we know is that (unlike the Canadian people, who
are split 50-50 on the issue) judges pretty much unanimously support
the homosexual cause.
Consider, for
instance, a remarkable event during gay pride week in Toronto. On
June 26 there was a Law Society reception at which gay lawyers and
clients whooped it up with the very same judges who had just ruled in
their favour. Amid toasting and applause the judges were photographed
embracing the grinning activists.
This event was
flaunted on a gay web site (www.equalmarriage.ca) but later removed.
Fortunately for history, the group REAL Women had already saved it,
and it's in their July/August newsmagazine Reality and on their Web
site (www.realwomenca.com).
They attached
everything on the gay Web site to their July 28 application to appeal
the Ontario decision to the Supreme Court of Canada.
If the gay Web
site is to be believed, the party-goers were a who's who of the
Ontario judiciary. They included Roy McMurtry, chief justice of the
Ontario Court of Appeal, and former Ontario attorney-general; Heather
Smith, chief justice of the Ontario Superior Court; Harry LaForme,
another Superior Court judge who endorsed the gay marriage claim,
along with James MacPherson of the Court of Appeal.
A lesbian lawyer
allegedly agreed at great length with Claire L'Heureux Dube, a former
Supreme Court justice, how wonderful it is that in Canada the judges
now do what Parliament won't.
Chief Justice
McMurtry allegedly declared, "Claire L'Heureux Dube advocated
gay rights in Mossop and added dignity to equality in Egan."
(Note that he says her job is to "advocate," not judge.) To
which Claire modestly replied it was a team effort: "Courts have
been at the forefront of this [gay] evolution, not to say revolution."
All this was
supposed to be private. It's important (even in Real Canada) to
preserve the myth of judicial impartiality. Sure enough, Chief
Justice Beverley McLachlin was in the same city three days later
piously assuring the Canadian Club, "Unlike politicians, judges
do not have agendas."
No, they just
report to lobby groups at parties how they have pre-empted Canadian
democracy since 1995. No agenda there.
This was not a
minor indiscretion by one judge. It's an ugly anti-democratic
attitude that pervades the entire eastern political and legal system
from the top down. And if you criticize it, as Harper had the guts to
do, you are ridiculed as a paranoid western loony.
Stick to your
guns, Steve. In the end we'll have to find provincial solutions to
federal problems like this one, but meanwhile it's good to have a few
principled people out there in that cesspool still willing to fight
for democracy.
- Link Byfield
Link Byfield is
chairman of the Edmonton-based Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy.
"Just
Between Us" is a feature service of the Citizens Centre for
Freedom and Democracy. The purpose of the Citizens Centre is to
improve the quality of life for all Canadians by promoting policies
that foster individual initiative and personal responsibility.
