Joke judiciary

The CBA, responding to Jason Kenney’s critque of the judiciary,

... said in a letter [hissy fit] to Kenney. "Judges cannot enter the public arena to respond to criticism." ...

As if to prove the CBA was full of crap, Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin went public:

... Chief Justice McLachlin, in a speech to the CBA governing council ... 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.”

Thanks, Beverley. Glad to see you’re staying away from politics. But, while judges may follow the law, "the law" often allows for a fairly wide range of options for judges. And they frequently select an application of the law that is the most lenient possible. It’s as if their decisions were intended to thwart government policy, just as Kenney said. The courts’ failure to deport accused war criminals is just one example.

In today’s NatPo, Bruce Hutcheson has a good column on the lower mainland drug wars and how thugs are given kid glove treatment by the courts. The Bacon brothers have for years been in nearly constant conflict with the law, involved with drugs, prohibited weapons, attempted murder and murder. Yet:

... They benefitted from ... a legal system that spat them back into society.

... James (Jamie) Bacon, 25, the youngest of the three brothers, took a bullet outside the same suburban house [in 2007]. ... fired back at his unnamed assailants with a Glock handgun, a prohibited weapon in Canada. [What? In Canada? Isn’t there a gun registry?] ... in a "secret compartment" installed inside the family SUV... Police discovered the gun, and three other prohibited semi-automatic weapons...

... Not two weeks prior, Jamie Bacon was sentenced to three years in prison, on an earlier drugs-related robbery conviction. Why was he not locked behind bars, but instead free to drive around in a Corvette? Because the court had determined he'd already served an "equivalent sentence" of 14 months for the robbery, in pre-trial custody. So he walked ...

... arrested again in 2008, this time with Jarrod, the middle Bacon brother, now 28. The pair were accused of dozens of firearms offences. Jamie was eventually convicted on some of those charges; Jarrod's charges were stayed.

... In 2009, Jamie was charged with first-degree murder, and conspiracy to commit murder, for his alleged role in the 2007 massacre of six people in Surrey...He was delivered to a Surrey remand centre and eventually was placed in solitary confinement. He complained [ and ...] took the remand centre to court and won. A B.C. Supreme Court judge found that Bacon's Charter rights had been breached. ...

But, what the courts won’t do to keep these thugs off the streets, other thugs will:

... [Jonathan] Bacon was shot dead Sunday afternoon after leaving the Delta Grand Okanagan, a conspicuous hotel and casino complex in downtown Kelowna.

Good riddance, but this is no way to keep law and order. Weak laws, weaker judges.