SC appointments: what would Coyne blog?

According to Susan McGrath, past-president of the Canadian Bar Association, Stephen Harper’s plan for reforming the Supreme Court appointments process “may very well leave the impression that the judges are being controlled by the politicians.” Ontario Attorney-General Michael Bryant fears that interrogation of candidates by MPs will “Americanize and politicize the judicial system.”

Oh ho ho. If there are two things Canadians fear more than Americans and politics, I don’t know what they are. Politicians playing politics? Heavens. What next, Canada’s men’s hockey team playing hockey? It is to dream.

Listen: having MPs interview potential SC judges can’t possibly politicize the Court, because it is already politicized. The whole appointment process is a highly political endeavour, with all the lobbying, calculating, scheming, partisanship and vote-buying that characterizes all politics. You thought the making of laws and sausages was disgusting, you should pay a visit to the Supreme Court chop shop someday.

But that’s the whole point. They don’t want you to see it happening, and they don’t want your MPs to have a role to play. Who is this “they”? The usual suspects: The elites, in Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto, the ones who still believe in the Empire of the St. Lawrence and the prerogatives of the Crown and the idea that Sir John A/Sir Wilfrid/St. Pierre of Trudeau/Jean “capo di tutti capi” Chretien know best and everyone else – especially MPs – should just sit down (or stand up) when and where they are told. Letting MPs interview Supreme Court judges? Next thing you know they’ll be asking for free votes in the Commons. Seriously, if these elites had their way, the Prime Minister would appoint the members House of Commons, on the grounds that free elections would risk “politicizing” the business of Parliament.

Yet it isn’t politics these people fear: they love politics! The more they control it, the more they love it. What they fear is not politics, but democracy, the notion that what the people want (as expressed through their elected representatives) is not what the people actually need.

There is nothing to fear about democracy. Come on into the pool, Canada. I assure you, the water is fine.