Unvetted Quebec judge Clément Gascon takes Supreme Court seat

The first judge in a decade to join the Supreme Court of Canada without any parliamentary scrutiny takes his seat Monday, just in time for a fall session featuring important cases on assisted suicide, religion in the public sphere and an Ottawa-Quebec dispute over gun-registry data.

Justice Clément Gascon of Quebec is a commercial law expert with little background in criminal law. No selection panel of parliamentarians put his name on a shortlist. No public hearing was held in Parliament about his appointment. And Prime Minister Stephen Harper did not cite any of his rulings when he named the 54-year-old Montrealer to the court.

Harper suspended Commons committee reviews of Gascon’s Supreme Court appointment in June: House documents

PARLIAMENT HILL—Prime Minister Stephen Harper suspended special Commons committee reviews in June of his nominations to the Supreme Court of Canada following an unprecedented public dispute in May over Conservative allegations that Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin had attempted to lobby against a 2013 appointment by the Prime Minister.

Documents show that although Mr. Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) scrubbed a House committee review in June of newly-appointed Justice Clément Gascon because there was “some urgency” in filling the position, the Prime Minister’s Office also suspected the review process had resulted in “breaches of confidentiality” during the 2013 elevation of Federal Court Judge Marc Nadon to fill a Quebec vacancy on the Supreme Court.