HALIFAX — The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada has added her voice to the legal profession’s condemnation of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, who sparked an uproar earlier this year on the issue of judicial independence.Speaking on the matter for the first time, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin applauded the Canadian Bar Association on Saturday for protesting comments Kenney made last winter, when he said Federal Court judges weren’t toeing the line of the Harper government’s immigration policies.
In a speech to the CBA’s governing council, McLachlin said:
“I was certainly — and I think all judges were — very pleased when an issue arose earlier this year when a minister of the Crown seemed to suggest that some judges were insufficiently solicitous to government policy. We were very, very gratified to see your president writing a powerful public letter to the minister in question, reminding the minister of the importance of public confidence in an impartial judiciary, that bases its decisions on the law and not on government policy.”
In a controversial speech last February to the law faculty at the University of Western Ontario, Kenney said Federal Court judges, who preside over immigration cases, weren’t doing enough to help the government remove immigrants with alleged criminal pasts, and other unwanted refugees, from Canada.