Chi-Kun Shi, a Hong Kong-born Toronto lawyer believes the best thing former Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin could do for her homeland is resign her seat at the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal..Shi moved to Canada in 1975 when she was 15 but has never forgotten her origins..“What happens to Hong Kong remains very close to my heart,” Shi said in an interview with Western Standard..“I am emotionally attached to Hong Kong and therefore sad, very sad. Knowing and having seen through my childhood how hard Hong Kongers strived to earn their living standard and civilized society, my heart aches to see it now being manhandled by brutal Chinese dictatorship. [It] makes it doubly gut wrenching to watch such brutality defended, especially at the highest level,” Shi said..McLachlin sits on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (HKCFA), something Shi says amounts to an endorsement of a regime that no longer respects basic human rights. Shi believes McLachlin should step down..“Justice McLachlin being an icon and role model to so many of us in law, what she does with respect to the rule of law will always reflect Canadian values in my view. At least, it affects my feeling as a Canadian and a member of the legal profession in Canada [and is] why I brought my motion for the Law Society to take a stand on this issue,” Shi said in an interview with the Western Standard..On June 16, former Federal Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler and former high-ranking judges from Commonwealth nations endorsed a 56-page legal paper explaining how rights were not respected in Hong Kong and why international judges should resign from its court..“There has been a trend toward greater judicial deference toward the executive in ways that deviate from established legal principles,” the paper reads..Its authors say having international judges remain offers “considerable reputational benefit to the Hong Kong government, which has repeatedly asserted the continued presence amounts to a vote of confidence in the Hong Kong courts as whole.”.Two British judges stepped down from the court on March 30 saying the bench was part of a system that no longer respected democratic principles. However, in an interview with CBC, McLachlin expressed disagreement with that view..“The court is completely independent of the regime in Hong Kong. The government is something else. And that’s just when you need courts, when you have laws like this [National Security Law], when you need governments that might need checking,” McLachlin said..“I’m hoping that it will work out and when the court makes those rulings that they will be respected, and that will help the cause of democracy in Hong Kong, which many people are still fighting for, I can tell you that.”.This scenario seems unlikely. In June last year, Zheng Yanxiong, China’s director of the Office for Safeguarding National Security, stated the judiciary “must highly manifest the national will and national interest, or else it will lose the legal premise of the authorization. … Once national security falls, the city will then be dominated by ideas of independence, mutual destruction, and self-determination.”.Beijing first overturned interpretations by the HKCFA in 1999 and has since encroached further. In a bail hearing on February 9, 2021, the HKCFA ruled that the National Security Law (NSL) is “not subject to constitutional review by the Court on the basis of any alleged incompatibility as between the NSL and the Basic Law as [it applies] to Hong Kong.”.Shi says this context means the court can’t curtail bad laws, contrary to McLachlin‘s claims..“It may no longer interpret the National Security [Law] to conform with either [Hong Kong’s] Basic Law or the ICCPR [standards of international law]. That being the case, perhaps Justice McLachlin could explain how she may assert any good influence,” Shi said..“She means to promote values of fundamental human rights and freedoms [but] I can see no pathway for the judiciary in HKCFA to do so.”.Shi says one way the Hong Kong government skews courts is by choosing which judges will adjudicate cases..“The Chief Executive has the right to, and does, dictate the judicial membership of all the panels that hear National Security Law case[s] at the HKCFA. Would Justice McLachlin have countenanced the Prime Minister of Canada asking to pick the panel to hear an appeal, any appeal, at the Supreme Court of Canada?” Shi asked..Shi says a resignation by McLachlin would make an important statement..“It will rightfully signal the calamity that has befallen the rule of law in Hong Kong to the detriment of its people. No window dressing.”
