Advertisement

Canada’s top court welcomes Alberta judge

Canada’s top court welcomes Alberta judge

The appointment of Alberta Judge Russell Brown to the Supreme Court of Canada this week makes seven of the nine judges on the country’s highest court appointees of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

But if the perception is that the Conservative government is stacking Canada’s top court in its favour, its record before the court would beg to differ.

Though only two of the high court judges predate the current government — Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin was appointed by Jean Chrétien and Rosalie Silberman Abella by Paul Martin — the court has struck down Conservative government policies time and again in recent years.

Most recently, the court ruled in June that the government’s ban on medical marijuana products was unconstitutional.

From Senate reform to native claims, mandatory minimum sentencing to immigration, the high court has culled Conservative policy that strayed away from Charter rights and the Canadian Constitution.

The Macdonald-Laurier Institute for Public Policy named the Supreme Court of Canada its “policy maker of the year” last year, noting the enduring impact the court has had on public policy.

“The federal government indeed has an abysmal record of losses on significant cases, with a clear win in just one in 10 of them,” says the think-tank of the 10 most significant cases decided by the high court last year.

“Some have gone so far as to say that Canada has entered a ‘legal cold war….’”

Tensions between the court and the Conservatives peaked last spring, when Harper and McLachlin engaged in an unprecedented war of words in the media after the high court rejected his choice for a new judge. The court said Marc Nadon was ineligible as a replacement for one of the three members required from Quebec.

On Tuesday, McLachlin welcome Brown to the fold.

“Justice Brown is a distinguished jurist,” she says in a statement. “He brings a rich background as an academic, practitioner and judge. I look forward to his contributions to the court.”

Brown’s ascent to the high court has been an accelerated one.

He was associate dean and a professor at the University of Alberta law school until he was named a judge of the trial division of Alberta’s Queen’s Bench in February 2013. Just over a year later, Brown was appointed to the Appeal Court for Alberta, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

Considered a small-c conservative, Brown was a board member of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice and a board chairman of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta.

Brown replaces retiring Judge Marshall Rothstein, effective at the end of next month.