Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae. File photo, Andre Forget, QMI Agency
Quebec’s Justice Minister is behaving like any good statist would. Today he announced that despite the Harper government campaigning for years on ending the gun registry and winning a majority government on that promise – well he’s going to try and stop them by using the courts.
It is a time honoured tradition of leftists and statists to try and use the courts to achieve that which they cannot achieve through the ballot box.
The federal government had the power and authority to set up the registry and they have the power and authority to get rid of it.
It’s even a matter of criminal law so constitutionally it is a matter for the federal government not Quebec or the other provinces.
Meanwhile Liberal Leader Bob Rae – what do you think? Is he a Liberal? A lefty? A statist? I remember him as premier – I’d say yes.
Well anyway, Bob Rae is calling on the Governor General to refuse to sign bill C-18, that’s the bill making it’s way through Parliament that will end the Wheat Board’s monopoly.
“As leader of the Liberal Party, I would ask most respectfully that full consideration be given to awaiting final disposition of this matter by the courts before the legislation receives royal assent,” Rae wrote to Governor General David Johnston.
As John Ibittson of the Globe and Mail pointed out, the last time a leader of the opposition asked for a Governor General to refuse to sign a bill, a mob burnt Parliament to the ground.
But the reason Rae wants the GG to save us is the government’s decision to move ahead despite the horrible opinion put out last week by Justice Douglas Campbell.
Campbell is a Federal Court judge, appointed by Liberal PM Jean Chretien, who really should do the honourable thing and retire so he can run for elected office. Probably as a Liberal.
Campbell said that the government broke the law by introducing a bill to end the wheat board monopoly. He pointed to section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act.
But as I explained in my newspaper column last Friday, Campbell is going against our system of government and will be overruled, as he has been many times before.
A fundamental principle of our Parliamentary system is that no Parliament can bind the actions of its successors. This is the reason balanced budget laws are a sham and not worth considering. This is why Campbell should have thrown the case out.
Do you really think that if the Harper government inserted a clause into Bill C-19, the bill to abolish the gun registry, and this clause said that no future government could bring in another gun registry without a vote by gun owners that Campbell would claim this was valid?
Of course he wouldn’t. Such a clause would be a sham.
A 2003 Federal Appeals Court ruling overturning a Campbell decision said that certain native groups were exempt from all taxes due to oral promises said that his ruling was a “complete abandonment of the rules of evidence” and “sparse, doubtful and equivocal.”
A 2011 Appeals court ruling said of Campbell, “In my view, the Judge failed to seize the substance of the critical issues before him. He also failed to deal adequately with the evidence before him in that he did not address key aspects thereof and did not, as a result, make any findings in regard thereto which would have allowed this Court to conduct a meaningful appellate review.”
Research done by Osgoode Hall Law School found that in the first six months of 2011 Campbell overturned every refugee case he heard meaning he overturned the decision of the immigration and refugee board. Between 2005 and 2010 he overturned 90% of all cases.
There is no way that the Immigration and Refugee Board is wrong 90% of the time. I mean I have problems with them but wrong 90% of the time. I just don’t buy it.
What this shows is that the problem is Campbell. His record, and I could share many more examples, shows that the man is ideological. Remember we have been warned about Stephen Harper appointing judges that will issue rulings based on their own political views? Well it runs both ways and in Campbell’s case his views are clear.
We will never erase judicial activism but when it raises it’s ugly head, we need to denounce it.
And that’s the Byline.