Ian Mulgrew: Judges’ pay becomes decade-long saga

“While the (Judicial Compensation) Act has avoided the unseemly involvement of judges of the B.C. Provincial Court in the negotiation of their remuneration, it has done so at the cost of constant litigation.”

The B.C. government has won the latest battle of a seemingly interminable conflict over Provincial Court judges’ salaries in what has become a decade-long Pyrrhic war damaging both institutions.

A process to depoliticize the setting of judicial remuneration has engendered only nasty legal arguments and court showdowns doing little to instill confidence in either politicians or the bench.

The judges have put their valued independence at risk by banding together like a ditch diggers’ union, while the government is rolling the dice with disinterested justice by regularly rejecting the recommendations of an independent commission.

The public can only scratch their heads over the process created by the Supreme Court of Canada 20-odd years ago hoping it would resolve the historic challenges in setting judicial compensation.

Ian Mulgrew: Scam-busting tool backed by court

The judge was asked to decide whether the securities law was consistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and whether its power to freeze funds, securities, contracts, property or other assets constituted unreasonable search and seizure.

Asset-freezing orders — key tools in combating financial misconduct — are constitutional, a B.C. Supreme Court justice has concluded after considering their sweeping use in an investigation into an alleged $50-million scam.

In a rare case referred for clarification of the legal issue by the attorney-general on behalf of the B.C. Securities Commission, Justice Veronica Jackson said such orders were non-intrusive and did not tread on privacy rights.

“The purpose of a Freeze Order is not to ensure property is available for further investigation, it is only to ensure property is available for payment of potential administrative penalties or disgorgement,” she wrote.

“I find, ‘the mechanism does not greatly impact privacy interests.’ As the Supreme Court of Canada has observed, in modern society regulation of activity by the state is often the means by which an individual’s pursuit of their self-interest is balanced with the community’s interest in achieving its collective goals and aspirations.”

Ian Mulgrew: To judge is human, maybe

“The subtle play of forces that empower judges to make law and that constrain judges in the choices they make is not well-understood by the lay public, by politicians, or by scholars of other disciplines.”

Justices in Canada are often treated like veritable saints and martyrs — as if they were Our Lady of Pincher Creek Beverley McLachlin or St. Thomas Berger.

The Lords and Ladies of the country’s courtrooms are also sometimes portrayed as well-paid officials with opaque expense accounts, little presence outside of the courtroom, clinging to aristocratic honorifics, 18th-century robes, and a medieval sense of entitlement.

Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Robert Sharpe tried to dispel some of that and pull back the curtain on the reality in his 2018 book, Good Judgment: Making Judicial Decisions, part of my catch-up summer reading.