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SUPREME COURT OF CANADA IS A POLITICAL TOY

The appointment of two hard-line feminist judges, Justices Abella and Charron, both known to be in support of the homosexual agenda, confirms that the Supreme Court of Canada is a political toy used by the Liberal government to further its own agenda. These appointments seal the fate of the same-sex marriage reference case to be heard by the Court on October 6, 7 and 8, 2004.

Madam Justice Rosalie Abella explained the power and biases of the judges best when she wrote in a 1987 feminist book, Equality and Judicial Neutrality, (before her judicial appointment):

Every decision-maker who walks into a courtroom to hear a case is armed not only with the relevant legal text but with a set of values, experiences and assumptions that are thoroughly imbedded.

The imbedded biases of Justices Abella and Charron are well known.

Justice Abella

Justice Abella, who has spent only a very few months in the actual practice of law, has climbed up the political/legal ropes based on her reputation as a "human rights" activist. In fact, many of her decisions have been based not on any established law, but rather on her own feminist ideology.

In the Rosenberg (1998) case, Judge Abella ignored a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Nesbit and Egan case (1995), which she was bound to follow as a legal precedent, and instead dismissed that case as "wrongly decided," and declared that same-sex partners were "spouses" under the Income Tax Act. In that decision, she displayed colossal arrogance when she stated:

Elected governments may wait for changing attitudes in order to preserve public confidence and credibility. Both public confidence and institutional credibility argue in favour of courts being free to make independent judgements notwithstanding those same attitudes.

She again spouted her arrogant beliefs in an outrageous speech in 2000 when she stated:

The judiciary has a different relationship with the public. It is accountable less to the public's opinions and more to the public interest.

In short, she believes that by virtue of her appointment to the court, she rules as a divine being with absolute certainty that she is right. Her arrogant liberal views were also apparent in the 1995 Carmen M case, when she reduced the age of sexual consent for anal intercourse to 14 from 18 years of age, as set out in the Criminal Code. She argued that homosexual sex acts (anal intercourse) are a basic form of sexual expression and should not be denied to those 14 years (age of consent) and older!

Justice Charron

Madam Justice Louise Charron was one of the presiding judges in the M and H case which held that the same benefits awarded to common-law heterosexual couples must be awarded to same-sex couples. She also has handed down decisions in favour of striking down the law prohibiting marijuana use on the grounds that it served a medical purpose. However, according to the prestigious medical journal, Lancet (Vol 364, July 24, 2004), there is little scientific evidence of effectiveness of marijuana as a medicine. In contrast to the liberal views of Justice Charron, in 2001, Mr. Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled that marijuana has "no currently acceptable use."

Justice Charron reduced a sentence for possessing and distributing child pornography from a 14-month jail term to house arrest and community service.

Finally, Justice Charron was also Associate Director of the National Judicial Institute that conducts a highly biased gender sensitivity programme for judges that promotes feminist legal theories, statistics and analyses.

Appointment Process of Judicial Appointments

The Liberal government has again misled the public when it claimed that it wanted to provide transparency in making judicial appointments to the Supreme Court.

The so-called "new" appointment system of judges by the Liberals is merely the "old" system in a not very careful disguise. The Prime Minister still makes the appointment from a short list provided him by the Minister of Justice, and the latter only appears before a Parliamentary Committee to "review the qualifications and track records of the appointed judges." This is a charade. The committee cannot vote on the appointments, there is no mechanism to object to nominations, and decisions of the Committee are not binding on the Prime Minister. This process is nothing more than a Liberal ploy of smoke and mirrors to pretend there have been some changes to the process and democratic input into it, when obviously there have been none.

The appointment of Justices Abella and Charron confirms both that the characteristics of impartiality and respect for parliamentary democracy and fairness are no longer qualifications for appointments to the court and that judicial appointments have become only a political toy to be used at the government's discretion. Certainly Mr. Martin and his Minister of Justice, Irwin Cotler, could not have appointed two more activist ideologues to the Supreme Court than Justices Abella and Charron.

The credibility and integrity of the Supreme Court have been undermined by these appointments. Disrespect for this court will follow.

Please write to:

The Right Hon. Paul Martin, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Canada
Langevin Building
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2
Tel: (613) 992-4211
Fax: (613) 941-6900
E-mail: Martin.P@parl.gc.ca

The Hon. Irwin Cotler, PC, MP
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
Justice Canada
East Memorial Building,
4th Floor, 284 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0H8
Tel: (613) 992-4621
Fax: (613) 990-7255
E-mail: Cotler.I@parl.gc.ca

Your MP
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6

Objecting both to the outrageous appointments of Justices Abella and Charron, and the process by which they were appointed.

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