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JUDGE ARBOUR LEAVES SUPREME COURT
The controversial left leaning feminist judge,
Louise Arbour, has announced that she will resign from the
Supreme Court of Canada in June to take up a UN appointment
as Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland.
Hand picked by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
to fill the job, Ms. Arbour will spend her time in the next
few years encouraging governments around the world to uphold
international human rights. However, just what "human
rights" and how they will be interpreted by her, is the
question. Ms. Arbour's predecessor, former Irish President
and feminist, Mary Robinson, is on record as declaring that
the UN's 1948 Declaration of Human Rights included abortion
and homosexual rights. This certainly was news to signatory
countries!
Ms. Arbour states she detests "conformist
institutions," including obviously marriage, since she
has never married and instead lived common-law for 27 years
with the father of her three children. She separated from
him when she took another UN job in 1996 as Chief Prosecutor
for the UN Tribunal on human rights crimes in Rwanda and former
Yugoslavia. At the time she took that appointment, she was
a member of the Ontario Court of Appeal. The appointment to
the UN tribunal in 1996 of Ms. Arbour was both illegal and
unconstitutional. This was due to the fact that the federal
Judges Act requires that federal judges may only engage
in matters within the legislative authority of Parliament.
S.100 of the BNA Act requires that judges' salaries
be paid only by the federal Parliament. As prosecutor of the
War Crimes Tribunal, however, Judge Arbour was paid by the
UN at an annual salary of approximately US$250,000.00 tax
free, and received her instructions from the UN Tribunal.
These legal restrictions on judges were of little concern
to Judge Arbour and the then Minister of Justice, Allan Rock,
who merely amended the Judges Act to accommodate Ms. Arbour's
wishes. The constitutional issue was simply ignored.
As a result of this previous illegal and unconstitutional
departure to the UN, however, Ms. Arbour has not dared to
ask again for another leave of absence from her judicial duties
- this time from the Supreme Court of Canada, to which she
was appointed in 1999. The Liberal government does not need
another brouhaha at this time by another "elitist"
breaking the rules for her own convenience and financial reward.
Instead, Ms. Arbour was obliged to resign from the Supreme
Court, which will take effect in June. Her appointment to
the new UN job for a four-year term can be renewed only once.
Thus, after a maximum of eight years at the UN, the question
arising is will Ms. Arbour be reappointed to the Supreme Court
of Canada? One hopes not. She listens to no one and has her
own agenda, which she has brazenly promoted throughout her
judicial career.
In this regard, we are well rid of Ms. Arbour's
"judging." During her term as a judge on the Ontario
courts and then the Supreme Court of Canada, she racked up
quite a record, as follows:
- gave convicts the right to vote;
- legalized lap dancing, ruling that such
sexual touching in a strip club did not violate community
"standards of tolerance";
- ruled it was discriminatory to deny the
same insurance benefits to common-law couples that were
awarded to married couples. This decision was in conflict
of interest, in that she was living common-law herself at
that time;
- ruled in support of criminalizing all
spanking of children.
Ms. Arbour is a strong supporter of the Charter
of Rights and a judge's absolute authority to interpret it.
In 2002 in Gosselin v. Attorney General of Quebec,
she ruled that judges have the right to review and scrutinize
government welfare policies. In short, she put forward the
astonishing doctrine that judges know better than legislators
how to allocate monies from the public purse, and that legislators
are subservient to the might and power of judges on all matters,
including financial decisions regarding the disbursement of
federal funds.
Ms. Arbour was no asset to Canada. Let's see
what damage she'll now inflict on the UN.
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