[LINK] "The secret short list that provoked the rift between Chief Justice and PMO"

[rfmcdonald]

The Globe and Mail's Sean Fine reports on the background behind the clash of Prime Minister Stephen Harper with the Supreme Court, in the failed nomination of Marc Nadon. It turns out that Harper really wanted to stack the Québec seat with an ideological peer and couldn't find one, hence the procedurally sketchy nomination.

Early last summer, Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin sat down with five federal politicians at the stately court building on Wellington Street, just down the road from Parliament.

The Supreme Court selection panel – three Conservative MPs, a New Democrat MP and a Liberal MP – had come bearing a list of six candidates to replace Justice Morris Fish of Quebec, who was nearing 75 and about to retire.

That list, crafted by the Prime Minister’s Office and the Justice Department, was so troubling to Chief Justice McLachlin that she phoned Justice Minister Peter MacKay and took initial steps toward contacting the Prime Minister. These attempts to raise potential eligibility issues would later trigger an unprecedented public dispute between the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice, a coda to the ultimately failed appointment of Justice Marc Nadon.

Until now, the list of six candidates has been a closely held secret. But The Globe and Mail has obtained both that list, and the short list ultimately chosen by the selection panel. The names on those lists not only shed light on Justice Nadon’s appointment but the larger political machinations behind it – and its fallout. A judge rejected. A court short-handed. A Prime Minister’s public accusation of impropriety by a Chief Justice.

The lists also show how the government, though aware of the risks, worked the selection process to find a more conservative judge than it believed was available in Quebec. The province’s top judges and lawyers were largely ignored for a job reserved by law for Quebec candidates because of the province’s unique civil code. Four of the six judges put forward were from the Federal Court in Ottawa, even though it wasn’t clear judges from that court were eligible. Adding salt to Quebec’s wound, one of those judges had been publicly rebuked by an appeal court for copying from government briefs.