John Robson: The supreme hubris of Richard Wagner

Bust of Chief Justice Wagner in the Supreme Court of Canada's Grand Entrance Hall in Ottawa. Photo by Christopher Nardi /National Post

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Evidently we mere mortals are not to criticize judges. So says… a judge. The judge. Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard Wagner recently complained that “rhetorical attacks” on the justice system weakened the system. Yeah? Well pardon my vulgar lèse-majesté but what weakens the system is inept hubris. And you’re it.

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As Ben Woodfinden wrote critically, Wagner’s annual news conference “now-familiar themes” included “that criticizing court decisions risks casting judges as ‘partisan actors’ or as ‘obstacles to the will of the people’” and that a non-partisan judiciary “sheltered from all politicization’ is essential to the rule of law.” Politicization as in criticism or accountability.

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Wagner would not deny that other people must be scrutinized and corrected. It’s what he and his colleagues do, albeit with increasing languor, from on high. Way up high. As Woodfinden complained, “A bronze likeness of the sitting chief justice now stands in the Supreme Court’s entrance, paid for by a donor the court won’t name, at a cost it won’t disclose, which Wagner, who posed for the sculptor, says he cannot identify.”

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Clearly he didn’t remind himself of Cato the Elder’s “I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue, than why I have one.” And nobody else dared remind him. Or of Lord Acton’s “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

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Moi? Perish the thought. Instead, in June 2003, dismissing calls to reform judicial appointments, then-chief justice Beverley McLachlin preened “the sole concern should be to appoint individuals who embody the most valuable qualities of impartiality, empathy and wisdom. From where I sit, the current judiciary in Canada meets the highest standards in this respect.”

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Yup. From its apex, she gave herself straight A+s for intellect and character, meeting her own supercelestial standards so who cares about yours?

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Now look. I hear good things about humility but cannot speak from experience. Like Prime Minister Mark Carney praising it in his book Value(s) while reinventing morality. I wouldn’t trust myself with unchecked authority, or him, and neither should you. But I can speak from experience that our court system is riddled with nightmarish delays, unaffordable procedures and capricious rulings, with smug judges having each other’s backs and mistaking fear for awe.

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It’s not that they’re necessarily worse than the rest of us. Though clearly Liberal politicians pick liberal lawyers as judges to push them further left than voters want, then subject them to indoctrination on “systemic racism and systemic discrimination” that Wagner doesn’t suspect of being politicization, just enlightenment.

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It’s that human frailty is an old and pernicious thing, that has outlasted better transvaluations than Carney’s or Wagner’s. As Colby Cosh wrote, after savage partisan attacks on the truckers’ convoy, Wagner refused to recuse himself because “Chief Justice Wagner has advised that he did not, at any time, either directly or indirectly, comment on the Emergencies Act … or matters at issue in the proceedings.”