The Federal Court doesn’t trust Harper. Does anyone?
If the Conservatives have anything to say about it, the coming election will be about trust. They’ll tell us Justin Trudeau is too callow to be trusted with power, that Tom Mulcair can’t be trusted not to sink the treasury by spending his way to a socialist utopia. And so on.
As campaign themes go, it’s a good one — or would be, were it not for the fact that inspiring ‘trust’ isn’t exactly Stephen Harper’s thing. A decade in power left a lot of bodies under the party bus. And now, one of Canada’s highest courts has signalled that it doesn’t really trust the prime minister either.
Suzanne Legault, Canada’s tenacious Information Commissioner, is launching a Charter of Rights challenge of the government’s budget law, C-59, because it includes a get-out-of-jail-free card for anyone who might have violated the Access to Information Act by destroying long gun registry data. This card can be used retroactively — to make illegal behaviour legal after the fact and to clear whatever obstacles remain to destroying the registry data.
The Federal Court had to decide whether to believe the government’s assurances that it would not destroy the data while Legault’s case proceeds. It chose discretion over faith — it signalled, effectively, that the Harper government’s solemn word of honour wasn’t going to be nearly good enough this time. Justice department lawyers tried to convince the court that there was no need for the government to produce a physical copy of the records because the Public Safety minister had made “four separate undertakings” to preserve them.
Legault wasn’t buying it. Her lawyer, Richard Dearden, cited a stack of affidavits, letters and email evidence showing that even as the Conservative government was promising the documents would be preserved in 2012, it was pursuing plans to destroy them outside of Quebec.
As campaign themes go, it’s a good one — or would be, were it not for the fact that inspiring ‘trust’ isn’t exactly Stephen Harper’s thing. A decade in power left a lot of bodies under the party bus. And now, one of Canada’s highest courts has signalled that it doesn’t really trust the prime minister either.
Suzanne Legault, Canada’s tenacious Information Commissioner, is launching a Charter of Rights challenge of the government’s budget law, C-59, because it includes a get-out-of-jail-free card for anyone who might have violated the Access to Information Act by destroying long gun registry data. This card can be used retroactively — to make illegal behaviour legal after the fact and to clear whatever obstacles remain to destroying the registry data.
The Federal Court had to decide whether to believe the government’s assurances that it would not destroy the data while Legault’s case proceeds. It chose discretion over faith — it signalled, effectively, that the Harper government’s solemn word of honour wasn’t going to be nearly good enough this time. Justice department lawyers tried to convince the court that there was no need for the government to produce a physical copy of the records because the Public Safety minister had made “four separate undertakings” to preserve them.
Legault wasn’t buying it. Her lawyer, Richard Dearden, cited a stack of affidavits, letters and email evidence showing that even as the Conservative government was promising the documents would be preserved in 2012, it was pursuing plans to destroy them outside of Quebec.
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