Let me tell you why I think we should find Premier Christy Clarks latest stunt so appalling. Im referring to her promotion of cameras in the courts during proceedings for those charged in relation to the Stanley Cup riot.
In subsequent statements on the issue she pushed aside a centuries-old underpinning of our criminal justice system: the presumption of innocence. Our premier knows all about those guys doing their crimes in public. Why wait for the courts to decide?
In her desperate desire to be popular, she encourages a mob that is less interested in justice than it is in revenge. These are the folks who exercised a kind of vigilantism using social media to track down those they considered guilty; they targeted their parents and their schools or chastised their employers demanding their firing.
Its the kind of approach we tend to associate with dictatorships in places such as China, where the alleged perpetrators of criminal acts are paraded through the streets to be shamed.
But thats not the worst of what our premier has been up to.
Theres another aspect to our criminal justice system thats essential to a democracy. That is the independence of the criminal justice system, from judges to prosecutors to cops. This was established to avoid political interference and has been on occasion fiercely defended by governments.
This independence was exercised in the matter of Clarks request to the Crown counsel to advocate for radio and television access to the courts during the riot trials. Neil MacKenzie, spokesperson for the criminal justice branch, told The Globe and Mail at this point the branch does not intend to ask prosecutors handling the riot cases to advocate that the proceedings be broadcast.
As you may know, Attorney-General Shirley Bond has since stepped up to overrule the criminal justice branch. She issued an order directing them to move forward on the demands of the premier. Prosecutors will be expected to ask for cameras in the court during proceeding on the riot. Whether a judge chooses to agree to this is beside the point for the moment.
Whats not is this: The role of the attorney-general in our political system is unusual in that she wears two hats. As a politician, shes a member of cabinet and loyal to the government. But in her prosecutorial role as the overseer of criminal prosecution, she is independent of government.
Its in that role as independent overseer, for example, that former-AG Ujjal Dosanjh was able to walk into then-premier Glen Clarks office and tell him to step aside during an investigation around the approval of a casino licence where the premier was alleged to have had a personal gain.
But back to this issue: Its rare but not unheard of for the attorney-general to intervene with his or her own department and issue directives, as Bond did last week. Dosanjh did it a couple of times as did Wally Oppal.
What makes this intervention different and dangerous is this: Its the first time anyone can recall the intervention being driven so obviously by the premiers office. It has been driven not, as others have been, to clarify a legal point or enable a process to more fully meet the requirements of the law. This time it was done strictly as an act of political opportunism.
Bond, who is not a lawyer, and who obviously chose to ignore the legal opinion of her staff, appears to have turned herself into a willing stooge for the premiers ambitions and allowed Clark to run roughshod over the principle of an independent justice system.
Premier Clark is busily ignoring the fundamentals of our justice system in more than one arena. Her governments obstinate refusal to fund legal support for interveners provided official standing in the Missing Womens inquiry is an unheard of break with precedent.
