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Sean Fine's obsession with Harper's judges ignores Liberals' history

1,445 views · Published 28 July 2015 · 7:30 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Rebel News · 2015 · News & Politics

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Brian Lilley of TheRebel.Media reports: I don’t mind journalists having opinions and expressing them but I think when you do that consistently, you are essentially a columnist or commentator and you should identify as such and not claim to be a simple reporter.

That’s one of my many problems with The Globe and Mail and their “justice writer” Sean Fine.

I don’t know Mr. Fine, I don’t think I’ve ever even bumped into him at the many Supreme Court briefings and decisions that I’ve covered but he writes about justice and the courts for The Globe which primarily means he writes stories attacking Stephen Harper’s court picks or his justice legislation.

For the past several days Fine has been writing about Harper’s attempts to make over the courts in his own image. Fine, and the many liberals and red tories he quotes are outraged that a sitting prime minister, in power for 10 years, would dare to appoint judges that share his legal outlook. 

I’ve got plenty of examples from the past of Liberals making the courts in their image but let me point out something. There is nothing in the rules of appointing judges that the Conservatives have broken. Something Fine begrudgingly acknowledges before again, doing what he can to make Stephen Harper sound bad.

Plenty of Canadians are critics of the Charter. It was not handed down from on high, it is not an infallible document. It was written by humans and has plenty of problems. Which is why the judges you favour, the ones that make bold, meaning activists decisions to read into the Charter that which was not there.

The courts have time and again changed what the Charter means, isn’t that a form of criticism of the original document? I would say so but Mr. Fine won’t see it that way because those bold decisions fit with his politics, his unspoken but plain to see progressive worldview.

Meanwhile he writes story after story on the evil Harper appointments of judges that believe the courts should read the Charter and the laws they rule on based on the words before them and their original meaning and intent, rather than the living tree doctrine that sees everything change over time.

After obsessing about Justice Miller for a time Fine is now obsessed with another Harper appointee, Justice John Rooke of Alberta, the kind of judge that believes Parliament and not courts make the law.

Fine even found a way to paint in the same way about the latest appointment to the Supreme Court named just this week – Justice Russ Brown from Alberta whom Fine describes as a “conservative judge.” He may have described other judges as Liberal but I do not recall ever reading that. Again, those would be the judges he likes, the ones he wants to see appointed to the court.

I am under no illusion that our courts, at all levels, are incredibly political. Of course the political and world view of the judge you appear before affects how they interpret the law.

But when you read people like Fine and those in the media that criticize Harper and his court appointments you would be led to believe that the PM is at war with the courts, that he has broken away from a tradition that simply saw the best legal minds appointed and nothing else.

I’ve told you about the media party campaign against the Conservatives before, it has been going on since before Stephen Harper ever took office and it will go on long after he is gone. 

As with most things that come from the media party, don’t believe the hype, do some homework and you will likely find that the truth is something very different than you have been told.


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