More indigenous judges needed in lower courts to develop skills for Supreme Court: Beverley Mclachlan interview

Valid points and hence the focus should be more on the yet to be formalized new process to appoint federally-appointed judges that better reflect Canada’s diversity, and the actual implementation by the government (for those who missed my analysis of the current baseline, see my Diversity among federal and provincial judges – Policy Options):

Canada’s top judge says the best way to one day see an aboriginal person named to the Supreme Court of Canada is for governments to appoint more indigenous judges to lower courts.

In an exclusive interview with the Star, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin said the country’s highest court requires high-level judging and “considerable” judicial experience, and while she welcomes ethnic diversity and more aboriginal judges in the system, she suggested they must work their way up.

She said the challenge for aboriginal aspirants to the high court is the same that women faced three or four decades ago when there were “virtually no women on the bench. And so how did the government go about changing that to the point now where we’re four women on the Supreme Court of Canada? They started appointing people at the trial level.

“But the difficulty we have with racial minorities, indigenous people is that we’re just beginning this process of getting the judges in place on the trial benches and so on.”

The federal government has launched a new judicial selection process, striking an independent advisory board to recommend candidates to fill the top court vacancy announced in March by retiring Justice Thomas Cromwell, of Nova Scotia, who steps down at the end of August.

Most of the judges at the top court are “completely bilingual now and those who might lack something are working very hard to improve their skill and the court works very well this way,” she said.

“Let me put it this way. It’s possible for the court to function without everyone being bilingual. We’ve done it in the past and I think we’ve done our job well. However, I believe that functional bilingualism is very helpful and desirable.”

But the question of diversity on the court is more complicated.

McLachlin pointed to her own experience. She was first appointed to the County Court of Vancouver “where I thought maybe that’s where I’d spend the rest of my days. And then I worked my way up through the trial court and through the court of appeal, and finally to the Supreme Court of Canada.”

Now women make up about 35 per cent of Canadian judges, she said. “We’ve been able to achieve a significant measure of diversity on the gender front and,” she stressed, “have judges who are reflective of this high calibre of judicial experience, intellectual experience and judgment and familiarity with the law and judging. So we’ve been able to have it all.”

McLachlin is encouraged by “a host of very accomplished indigenous lawyers and professors” who she said are the result of proactive programs in law schools and universities and better educational standards. However, she did not suggest any of those are in a position to be vaulted onto the top bench from the bar, as has been the case with some Supreme Court judges in the past: Suzanne Côté, Ian Binnie, John Sopinka.

Asked if there are any current sitting aboriginal judges that could sit on the high court, McLachlin dodged.

“I can’t say; I haven’t done a survey. We’ll see who applies, and what comes of it.”