Certain conservative pundits are trying to make the link between Frank Graves's moronic "culture war" comments and Michael Ignatieff's comments this week in Saskatchewan reiterating his support for the deeply flawed NDP private member's bill requiring all Supreme Court justices be sufficiently bilingual to hear all cases, in either official language, without any translation services. Tie the two together and you have evidence of Ignatieff taking Graves's advice and launching a war of a cultural nature (for some reason the term "culture war" makes me giggle - I can't help but think of a ballerina declaring war against the lead tenor from the local opera).
Nice try, but no dice.
The thing is, what Ignatieff now thinks about the NDP's bill is irrelevant. Or at least past its best before date.
The bill passed third reading in the House weeks ago with the unanimous support of the NDP, Liberals and Bloc. The House is finished with the legislation and as far as that chamber is concerned, as soon as the Senate rubber stamps it, our highest court will have been remade.
Badda boom, badda bing, ambitious lawyers better sign up for a couple of extra courses at the local French institute (since that's all it takes to learn how you say "promissory estopple" along with about 10,000 other complex legal terms in your second language).
So, about that Senate rubber stamp... if ever there was a bill that was crying out for a "sober second thought" - some deeper study, this is it. Some questions the senate might ask include:
» Is there a problem right now with judges using translation services (ie - is there a need for this bill beyond the symbolic)?
» How many otherwise qualified lawyers in Canada would be qualified for appointment if this bill passes (this bookie sets the over/under at 50 lawyers in the entire country who could litigate or judge a Supreme Court level case in their second language - and yes, by definition if you can't litigate a case before the Supreme Court in your second language, you aren't qualified in my opinion to judge one. This disqualifies almost as many francophone lawyers as anglophone ones)? How many of them reside in cities other than Ottawa and Montreal? How many of them are aboriginal? How many of them are non-white?
» Is this legislation constitutional? (There is a decent argument the Supreme Court would strike down this legislation - yes, a bit awkward but no more so than past cases on judges compensation, for example);
» Most importantly, would we have a "better" court - in every sense of the word, including but not exclusively representing the bilingual nature of our country - the day after this legislation comes into effect as compared to today?
So it's all up to the unelected, illegitimate Senate to respect the will of the House and rubber stamp the bill or hold it up for further study.
When the Liberal-controlled Senate tried to study equally flawed crime legislation, Stephen Harper cried bloody murder, his ministers claimed a constitutional crisis was upon us and played all sorts of political games.
Now that the shoes are reversed - an opposition supported bill in front of a Conservative controlled Senate - so it will be very interesting to watch how Harper plays this out.
The one thing that's certain is as far as this bill is concerned, the ball is clearly in Harper's court, not Ignatieff's.