Doug Ford is tainting Ontario’s judiciary

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Many years ago my late colleague and former Premier of Manitoba Howard Pawley and I spent several hours while working on a book chapter debating his approach to appointing senior provincial public servants.

Howard was a profound ideologue who believed that as Premier he had a responsibility to appoint Deputy Ministers (most senior public servants) who were at minimum empathetic to his left-leaning approach to governance.

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As both a former public servant and long-standing instructor on management and administration of government I vigorously disagreed with Pawley.

“Public servants at all senior levels,” I argued, “are empowered to serve all governments regardless of ideology with studious impartiality.”

I acknowledge that perhaps I was a tad naive having only been associated with real live politics from backrooms.

I mention this debate because ironically our blustery Premier Doug Ford is treading socialist Howard Pawley’s ideological path. Only in Ford’s case he wants to “up-the ante” and introduce his own ideology into the process whereby judges nominated for Ontario’s Court of Justice are selected. He triggered a controversy with an announcement about two recent additions to the Judicial Appointments Advisory Committee.

In the legislature Ford explained he wanted “like-minded” judges who share his personal belief that “massive crime waves across our cities” are caused by judges releasing too many criminals on bail. So he opted for dependable cronies.

One of his two appointees is Matthew Bondy, a former deputy chief of staff to Ford. He is a registered lobbyist with something titled “Enterprise Canada” among whose clients are Colt Canada, a subsidiary of the U.S. gun manufacturer Colt. Plus Build Urban, engaged in real estate development and land acquisition services.

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The second of Ford’s judicial committee appointees is Brock Vandrick, once Ford’s director of the euphemistically titled office of stakeholder relations. Vandrick is also a registered lobbyist with clients including the Ontario Forest Industries Association, the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters and the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies.

I concede that a Premier and indeed any senior politician does have a right to select those with whom he or she agrees. Furthermore, I acknowledge that appointing persons to advisory positions with whom a Premier is ideologically at odds would be largely counter-productive. So to some extent it’s OK to appoint lobbyists, which according to Ontario’s Integrity Commission is not a barrier, providing basic conflict-of-interest rules are enforced.

Thus, appointing a few Ford cronies is not as much an issue as motivation behind Ford’s choices.

In Question Period Ford stated “I’m making sure communities are safe. We’re going to triple down on getting judges that believe in throwing someone in jail when they kick the doors in, put a gun to people’s heads, terrorizing their kids, terrorizing the parents to the point that the kids don’t want to stay at home anymore.”

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A cute word-play, maybe, but his tripling down was meaningless insofar as his essential impetus is concerned. Is crime so rampant and as vicious as Ford asserts? Naturally the substantive evidence for his claim is as much bluster as fact. Where is there evidence for Ford’s assertion that judges are easily persuaded to grant bail?

Retired former prosecutor and Ontario criminal court judge Norman Douglas, after nearly a half-century in the criminal justice system in his recently published book You Be the Judge, has pointed out that, with few exceptions, Ontario bail hearings are subject to publication bans which prohibit journalists from reporting the rationale behind any bail decision. So from whence did Mr. Ford derive data for his triple-down assertion?

Hopefully, the quality of Ontario judges does exceed Premier Ford’s “soft on crime” assertion. We do not need an American profile upon which to premise appointment of judges in Ontario. Appoint cronies to committees if that provides an assurance to a blustery Premier but please refrain from demeaning Ontario’s judicial system with a premise drawn from watching far too many American crime television shows.

Filling jails, as some American states are finally beginning to discover, does not solve crime. Indeed, more filled jails can even exacerbate crime.

Lloyd Brown-John is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Windsor and can be reached at lbj@uwindsor.ca.

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