Thursday, September 21, 2006

Nice judicial appointment, Steve.

Stephen Harper is following in the footsteps of his hero George W in many ways -- the latest is his appointment of an extreme conservative ideologue as an Ontario judge.

It's not surprising that Harper would appoint a conservative judge, and even in my view that's not all bad. There are a lot of judges that were appointed by the Liberals and for the sake of balance, the appointment of a reasonable conservative would probably be a good thing. But David Brown isn't a reasonable conservative by any standard, and he's far too much of an extremist to be in a judiciary position. Energy is his area of legal expertise, but he's also shown far too much interest in anti-abortion, anti-assisted suicide and other so-called "sanctity of life" issues. Further, he's represented such wingnut groups as REALwomen and Focus on the Family in a court intervention against same-sex marriage. No extremism there!

The fact that David Brown would ever act for groups like RW and FOTF should have immediately disqualified him from the judicial appointment. Both groups are far too extremist; REALwomen's website even links to hate groups like NARTH. Anyone who'd represent a group that condones the kind of hate spewed by NARTH has no business being anywhere near a judicial bench. Has Harper just made an error in judgement, or is this extremist agenda what he wants for Canada?