The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada insists she was not directly involved in the decision to award the Order of Canada to abortionist Henry Morgentaler. Beverley McLachlin says as the chair of the committee that looks after nominations to the Order, she doesn’t normally take part in the committee’s voting process. She also says that “contrary to what has been reported,” she doesn’t control the debates over which nominees should be accorded the honour. A coalition of more than 40 pro-family groups sent a letter to the Canadian Judicial Council last week, complaining that McLachlin had damaged public trust in the impartiality of the judiciary.
McLachlin says she’s only in the room at the committee meeting to “make sure the meeting runs well and fairly and that the vote is taken fairly – and not to weigh in for, or against, any particular candidate.” She did allow that she would have a vote in the case of a tie on any nomination.
McLachlin also denies that historically, nominees to the Order are nominated by unanimous consensus of the panel. “There has been no practice of consensus,” she said. “Sometimes there is consensus. But certainly that is not a requirement.”
The head of the Canadian Family Action Council, which took the lead in filing the complaint, says McLachlin’s response doesn’t really change anything. In a prepared statement, Brian Rushfeldt says he was “amazed” that the Chief Justice “failed to address any of the real allegations about the violations” of the constitution of the Order of Canada. Rushfeldt says McLachlin tried to “defend herself by saying she did not vote. Well – we never said she did. And her issue that consensus is not required is true in the last few years but we are told the council used operate only on consensus ( but since the secrecy around this is so deep how do we find out except by an investigation).”
The challenge of the nomination is continuing.
Public date: August 19th, 2008
