Trudeau faces diversity challenge in Supreme Court judge selection

Interesting comment about the small ‘pipeline’ of potential visible minority and Indigenous judges bequeathed by the previous government (for my analysis of judicial and other diversity, see my free download in iPad/Mac version (iBooks) and Windows (pdf) Version)::

In Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first chance to name a judge to the Supreme Court of Canada, the search for diversity is bumping up against the reality of limited choices – raising the odds that a government that chose just three white males in its first 15 judicial appointments will pick one for the country’s most powerful court.

Mr. Trudeau has an opportunity to make a historic mark. If he names a woman for the job that comes open in September, he would give the court the first female majority in its 141-year history. If he names a member of a visible minority or an indigenous judge, that, too, would be a first for the court.

His Liberal government has left little doubt that it would like to find a well-qualified candidate from one of those groups.

“If it’s possible, they’re going to give it to a female, bilingual, visible minority – if they can find that person,” a Liberal party insider said.

But the search is proving to be a challenge. The opening comes with the upcoming retirement of Justice Thomas Cromwell of Nova Scotia and convention dictates that his successor must come from Atlantic Canada. The Prime Minister’s insistence that new appointees to the country’s highest court be functionally bilingual limits his choices further.

And there are no obvious bilingual stars among women on the region’s appeal courts (the most frequent source of Supreme Court judges) and in its law firms, more than a dozen legal observers in Atlantic Canada said in interviews. As for visible minority or indigenous judges, the pipeline was left largely empty by the former Conservative government.

And so Mr. Trudeau’s attention may yet turn to white males. Among the leading candidates in that category are Justice Marc Richard of the New Brunswick Court of Appeal and Chief Justice Michael MacDonald of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal.

Source: Trudeau faces diversity challenge in Supreme Court judge selection – The Globe and Mail