BLACKETT: Alberta's Justice Moreau a progressive tilt to the Supreme Court

Dear Leader, Justin Trudeau, recently appointed Alberta Justice Mary Moreau to Canada’s top court. Justice Moreau replaces gone-too-soon Russell Brown but seems unlikely to assume his “rule of law” mantle. Rather, her appointment seems to make the Court even more “progressive,” which I believe is a serious problem.To explain why, first, a little detour.Whatever Canada’s Chief Justice meant when he proudly agreed that Canada’s Supreme Court is the most “progressive” in the world, that term usually means 'woke.'Wokeness is a loose bundle of unproven, incoherent, mutually-contradictory and reductionist ideologies that explain just about everything, including biological sex, as the result of some form of oppression. While it seems to be an extension of the twentieth-century civil rights movement, it is very nearly its opposite. It masquerades as civil rights while subverting them.It holds, for example, racism is not only good but necessary. It tells us that whether or not something is 'racist' depends on the victim’s race — a sentiment no doubt expressed at many a Southern lynching.Its regressive racism is just part of its broader goal — to root-out all forms of 'oppression' including things such as liberal democracy, the rule of law including legal equality, reason, science, capitalism, work ethic and merit. Wokeness calls these things 'patriarchy,' 'systemic discrimination,' 'whiteness,' 'colonialism,' and so on. Let’s just pause to marvel that we now call it “progressive” to conceive of work ethic and rational thinking as uniquely white attributes.I suspect people often embrace woke concepts and jargon without understanding, much less supporting, the whole woke enterprise. Some embrace some parts of wokeness while rejecting others such as feminists who insist that men cannot become women.Wokeness has taken a long march through Canada’s institutions. However, a juicier institutional target could hardly be imagined than lawyers and judges. These are, effectively, the guardians of Canadian law. If lawyers and judges are made woke, Canadian law will become woke, bypassing democracy.Elon Musk recently made this point. Discussing George Soros’ success in reducing prison populations by funding the election campaigns of progressive district attorneys, Musk said: “Soros realized you don’t actually need to change the laws, you just need to change how they’re enforced. If no one chooses to enforce the laws or laws are differentially enforced, it’s like changing the law.”I have argued elsewhere that Canada is in serious trouble, because Canadian lawyers are being indoctrinated to be woke, to believe and act on the belief that racism is deeply entrenched in Canadian law, and that liberalism itself is just a cover for racism.The same pressure is also being applied to Canada’s judges.To understand how a progressive judge could effectively change the law, let’s consider the once-modest legal rule called judicial notice.The rule operates in a trial. A trial is held to prove facts with evidence. Part of a judge’s job is to control what evidence is admitted during a trial.But some facts are so commonly known they needn’t be proven with evidence, for example, 2 + 2 = 4. Judges are permitted to apply such common knowledge in court. A judge may take judicial notice that 2 + 2 = 4. Until recently, this was little more than a pragmatic rule. If the parties had to prove common knowledge, a trial would never end.More recently, Canadian judges have started to use judicial notice in a very different, progressive way.This traces back at least to the 1992 decision in Moge v. Moge in which judicial notice was taken of social context, that the “feminization of poverty is an entrenched social phenomenon” (i.e. being a woman causes poverty) and that placing too much value on financial self-sufficiency when making spousal support orders was making women’s poverty worse.Whether or not that was true, it’s hardly common knowledge, such as 2 + 2 = 4. Judicial notice was now being applied to complex socioeconomic issues of cause and effect.This trend continued in R. v. Gladue where the court said sentencing judges could take judicial notice of systemic facts such as indigenous people are more likely to be jailed because they have “fundamentally different world views … with respect to such elemental issues as the substantive content of justice and the process of achieving justice.”In other words, it is now treated as common knowledge in Canadian law that indigenous people think fundamentally differently than whites. Martin Luther King rolls-over in his grave.Our top court then went a giant step further in R. v. Ipeelee where it declared: “Courts must take judicial notice of such matters as the history of colonialism, displacement and residential schools and how that history continues to translate into lower educational attainment, lower incomes, higher unemployment, higher rates of substance abuse and suicide and of course higher levels of incarceration for Aboriginal peoples.”Notice the word “must.” Judicial notice was now being used to compel lower courts to accept and apply the Supreme Court’s knowledge of complex socioeconomics.Let there be no doubt, social context is a euphemism for some part of the progressive worldview. In Ipeelee, for example, the court says “systematic factors” provide “context” for a sentencing judge to “ensure that they are not contributing to ongoing systemic racial discrimination.”Apart from social context being forced on lower courts through the judicial hierarchy, Canadian judges are also educated on the topic. In 2022, Jason Kenney’s so-called conservative government passed Bill 14 which prohibits a person even being considered for appointment to the bench unless they have completed education in “social context issues.” Most Alberta voters probably don’t even know what that means.Trudeau’s Liberals, then, deserve some rare credit here for transparency. When they passed federal legislation, they had the decency to tell Canadians “social context” included “systemic racism and systemic discrimination.”All of which brings us back to Justice Moreau. Moreau describes herself in progressive terms and thinks judges should apply progressive concepts in the judicial system: “ … my personal and work experience has helped me to understand the importance of diversity and inclusion in Canada's justice system."(As an aside, have you noticed the term 'equity' is being quietly retired?)Under her watch Alberta’s Court of King’s Bench adopted “diversity and inclusion” as one of the “four pillars” of its strategic plan. When signing her name to a public statement applauding the Law Society of Alberta’s woke “My Experiences” project, Moreau said: “Training in cultural understanding and conscious/unconscious bias is now a standard component of judicial education in Canada. Clearly, there is more to be done.”Moreau thinks judges should embed “indigenous perspectives” into Canada’s legal system.Moreau is big into judicial education. She noted, upon her recent appointment: "Judges have a responsibility to hone their knowledge of legal and social context to ensure respect, fairness and dignity for all members of society and to clearly and definitively eliminate myths and stereotypes.”I expect that, but for these progressive credentials, Trudeau would not have appointed Moreau to Canada’s highest Court.Goodbye Russell Brown, we will miss you.Glenn Blackett is a Calgary based civil rights lawyer working with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms network of lawyers.

BLACKETT: Alberta's Justice Moreau a progressive tilt to the Supreme Court

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