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The Liberal government is reshaping the bench, appointing a substantial majority of women, even though they make up a minority of applicants. The approach is winning praise from some in the legal community, while sparking concern about quotas from others.

A year and a half after taking office, the government has appointed 56 judges, of whom 33 are women 59 per cent. Yet women make up only 42 per cent of the 795 people who have applied to be judges since the Liberals put in place a new appointment process in October.

Making federal institutions more reflective of Canadian diversity has been a theme of the Liberal government. Its cabinet has an equal number of men and women, and it announced a plan last week to ensure more women and minorities are named to federally funded research chair positions at universities.

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould says a more diverse bench will build the publics confidence in the judiciary. We are beginning to demonstrate how it is possible to have a bench that truly reflects the country we live in, she said in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail.

But some in the legal community question the governments commitment to the merit principle in appointing judges to federally appointed courts, which includes the superior courts of provinces, the Federal Court and Tax Court.

Im not really in favour of a quota system those are alarming discrepancies, Brenda Noble, a veteran family lawyer in Saint John, said in an interview, referring to the gap between female appointees and applicants. You want to have the best people in the job.

Ian Holloway, the University of Calgarys law dean, said it is hard to fault the government for increasing the proportion of women judges. Even so, he said he worries the government is putting too much emphasis on gender.

In the old days, it was offensive that people got judgeships just because they were Liberals or Tories. That helped breed contempt for the judiciary. What we dont want to do is replicate that in a different form.

But others say the government is doing the right thing.

Brenda Hildebrandt, a Saskatoon lawyer and governing member of the Saskatchewan Law Society, was pleased. Do I think its a good thing women are more represented on the bench? Yes, I do, and I would hope that those are qualified candidates and that the fact that theyre women is just one consideration, albeit important.

Rosemary Cairns Way, a University of Ottawa law professor who has studied diversity on federally appointed courts, supports the governments move as a way of achieving gender parity. When there is no shortage of meritorious candidates, it seems to me the government can legitimately choose judges who, in addition to being independently qualified, will fulfill other institutional goals such as a more diverse and gender-balanced bench.

When the Liberals took office, 35 per cent of the federal judiciary (full-time and semi-retired) were women, according to the Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs. Given a similar time frame to the Conservatives a decade in office the Liberals would ultimately put women in the majority among the full-time federal judiciary if they maintain the current ratio of appointments. The previous government appointed more than 600 full-time federal judges, 30 per cent of them women; women also made up 30 per cent of applicants during the Conservatives years in office.

The governments emphasis on creating a bench more reflective of Canadas diversity does not extend quite as much to racial minorities as it does to women. However, there are at least seven visible minorities among the new appointees two of Indigenous ancestry, three of South Asian background, one Japanese-Canadian and one Chinese-Canadian.

The Liberals have authorized the judicial-affairs commissioner to collect, for the first time, data on race, Indigenous status, gender identity, sexual orientation and physical disability of applicants and appointees. But the office would not release those numbers to The Globe and Mail for this story, saying it is still preparing the data and it intends to publish them soon.

The Globe asked Ms. Wilson-Raybould whether she has a numerical target for the appointment of women to the federal judiciary. She replied that the government appoints judges based on merit and the needs of the court. In assessing merit, I do not discriminate against applicants based on their gender, ethnic or cultural background, she said in an e-mail.

She acknowledged that the pace of racial-minority appointments is lagging and suggested the problem is a lack of minorities in the legal profession.

We know that more needs to be done to increase the number of visible minorities in our law schools. As that happens, the face of the profession will change and evolve to better reflect the rest of the population.

Rob Nicholson, a former Conservative justice minister, and the partys current justice critic, said his chief concern is that qualified people be appointed. If its 55-per-cent women and 45-per-cent men, as long as we get qualified people for this, he said.

Follow Sean Fine on Twitter: @seanfineglobe

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Liberals reshape judicial bench with appointments of women - The Globe and Mail

After President Donald Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, Democratic leaders and media members pounced on the opportunity to condemnTrump for what they called a Nixonian move, some even calling for his impeachment.

However,not too long before that, the same lawmakerscriticizing Trump for a supposed abuse of power were calling for Comeys firing themselves, declaring that Comey was unfit to lead the federal bureau. The Daily Callercompiled media clips of the most blatant flip-flops, which include comments made by SenateMinority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Jarrold Nadler(D- N.Y.), CNN political analyst David Gregory, and Rep. Maxine Waters(D-Calif.).

The president ought to fire Comey immediately, and he ought to initiate an investigation, Nadler said in November as he urged former President Barack Obama to removeComey for his handling of failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clintons email investigation, which Nadler said very well may have cost her the presidential election.

Today, Nadler takes a much different position.

It is clear that the motive, that this firing was to stop an investigation that the president feared. History will conclude that this is the equivalent or worse than the Saturday Night Massacre by President [Richard] Nixon, Nadler declared earlier this week.

Waters made similar contradicting comments, saying after the election that Comey had lost credibility, yet criticizing Trump for making the move to fire him. When asked if she thought Clinton should have fired Comey, had she won, Waters had a perplexing answer.

If she had won the White House, I believe that given what he did to her and what he tried to do she should have fired him, yes, Waters responded.

Trumps firing of Comey raised questions for some Democratic lawmakers who said Trump should not be allowed to fireComey while the FBIwas investigating the Trump campaigns alleged ties toRussia.

Trump reiterated Thursday that he was not under investigation. However,acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe said Thursday during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill that a highly significant investigation of alleged Russia involvement in the 2016 elections was underway and would continue.

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Watch: Video hilariously shows liberals flip-flopping over whether Comey should be fired - TheBlaze.com

The potential for another Supreme Court vacancy coming open later this year appears to have liberals panicking.

Rumors of Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement have swirled for months but recently reached a fever pitch inside the Beltway. Shortly after the presidential election in November, the Supreme Court shot down speculation that Kennedy would leave the high court this year. But Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, both Senate Judiciary Committee members, have said that they expect another vacancy this summer.

Elizabeth Wydra, president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, wrote an opinion piece this week urging, "Justice Kennedy, don't abandon your legacy."

"In the Trump era with a Senate confirmation process now subject to a simple majority vote, thanks to McConnell and Senate Republicans it is impossible to imagine any stronger or more able steward of Justice Kennedy's legacy than Kennedy himself," Wydra wrote. "Despite all the pressure and pointed rumors of his retirement, he surely realizes this.

"In the years ahead, Kennedy's influence over the nation's future will be more compelling than ever. In short, the Supreme Court is once again the Kennedy Court."

Wydra also wrote that Kennedy "might be more immune to retirement pressure than Trump and his supporters have bargained for," given Kennedy's unique position on the high court. With four conservatives and four liberals on the court, Kennedy often casts the deciding vote.

There are reasons to doubt the amplification of rumors about Kennedy's retirement. Roger Stone, a political operative who has advised President Trump, told prolific conspiracy theorist Alex Jones this month that Stone could report "authoritatively" that "the president has been informed of the coming resignation of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy."

Stone said the "frontrunner" to replace Kennedy was "clearly Neil Hartigan from the Western District of Pennsylvania" who Stone said was the runner-up to Justice Neil Gorsuch in the race to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. While there's a small chance Stone was referring to the former Democratic Illinois Attorney General Neil Hartigan, it's more likely he messed up the name of Judge Thomas Hardiman, a 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals judge from Pennsylvania who appeared on Trump's Supreme Court short lists.

Ultimately, Kennedy is the only unimpeachable source on the timing and manner of his departure from the Supreme Court. If Kennedy decides how to leave the high court in the same fashion he rules on controversies, he will continue to keep court-watchers guessing.

But the calculus for liberals worried about another Supreme Court vacancy does not appear to have changed. While Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill opposed Gorsuch's Supreme Court confirmation, she outlined how Senate Democrats view future Supreme Court vacancies in comments to donors at a private fundraiser in March. In audio obtained by the Washington Examiner, the senator, who is up for re-election in 2018, sounded the alarm for liberals about the next vacancy.

"God forbid, Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies, or [Anthony] Kennedy retires or [Stephen] Breyer has a stroke or is no longer able to serve. Then we're not talking about Scalia for Scalia, which is what Gorsuch is, we're talking about Scalia for somebody on the court who shares our values," McCaskill said at the private fundraiser. "And then all of a sudden the things I fought for with scars on my back to show for it in this state are in jeopardy."

Now that the Senate has lowered the threshold for confirming a Supreme Court justice to 51 votes, liberals such as McCaskill look poised to oppose Trump's lower court nominees at every turn. The Trump administration has already selected three individuals Judge Amul Thapar, Michigan Supreme Court Justice Joan Larsen and Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Stras from his Supreme Court short lists for federal appeals court positions, and liberals did not wait long to mount opposition.

"Lower court nominees today can become Supreme Court nominees tomorrow," Wydra said.

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Rumors of Supreme Court vacancy spark liberal panic - Washington Examiner

Harvard Law Schools Laurence Tribe accepts an award from the ACLU in 2011. Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images

ID: 11057835

Democrats and the mainstream media have spent the months since Donald Trumps election fixated on the the flood of unconfirmed reports, half-truths, and outright propaganda that accompanied his rise.

But some of the countrys leading liberal lights respected figures including elected officials, prominent legal scholars, members of the media and celebrities are themselves sharing wild allegations about the Trump administration from unreliable sources.

Perhaps no one embodies this trend so well as Laurence Tribe. Tribe is one of the countrys foremost constitutional lawyers, a the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard Law School. He has argued dozens of cases in front of the Supreme Court. Hes a major figure in American public life. In recent months Tribe has devoted much of his activity on Twitter to outraged extrapolation about the Trump administration. Often, these take the form of big if true tweets that cite unconfirmed reports about Trumps possible misdeeds and are essentially conjecture.

On April 22, Tribe shared a story from a website called the Palmer Report a site that has been criticized for spreading hyperbole and false claims entitled Report: Trump gave $10 million in Russian money to Jason Chaffetz when he leaked FBI letter, a reference to the notorious pre-election letter sent by former FBI director James Comey to members of Congress that many have blamed for Hillary Clintons November loss.

The report the article points to is a since-deleted tweet by a Twitter user named LM Garner, who describes herself in her Twitter biography as Just a VERY angry citizen on Twitter. Opinions are my own. Sometimes prone to crazy assertions. Not a fan of this nepotistic kleptocracy. Garner, who has 257 followers, has tweeted more than 25 thousand times from her protected account.

I dont know whether this is true, Tribes tweet reads, But key details have been corroborated and none, to my knowledge, have been refuted. If true, its huge.

Reached by email, Tribe said that he was aware of the Palmer Reports generally liberal slant and that some people regard a number of its stories as unreliable. Still, he added, When I share any story on Twitter, typically with accompanying content of my own that says something like If X is true, then Y, I do so because a particular story seems to be potentially interesting, not with the implication that Ive independently checked its accuracy or that I vouch for everything it asserts.

Asked whether he had considered his role in spreading unconfirmed information, given his stature in American society, Tribe responded that I really dont have anything to tell you about my thoughts regarding my personal role in sharing information over social media in this usually agnostic manner.

Tribe is far from alone among prominent liberals in sharing unconfirmed, speculative, and sometimes wild information. But he is emblematic of an information echo chamber that has grown up since the election around sites like the Palmer Report and figures like the anti-Russian influence crusader Louise Mensch, in which anti-Trump public figures share unreliable information, the very act of which the sources of these reports use to bolster their own legitimacy. It therefore operates similarly though it is smaller and far less powerful to the vast new right wing online media that launders dubious claims through increasingly mainstream outlets before, sometimes, reaching the highest levels of government.

The Palmer Report is the work of Bill Palmer, who describes himself on his website as a political journalist who covered the 2016 election cycle from start to finish. Before the Palmer Report, Palmer ran a site called Daily News Bin, which Snopes Brooke Binkowski called basically a pro-Hillary Clinton news site. It was out there to counter misinformation. Last November, Palmer introduced his new site as an investigative reportingside project and has since written hundreds of articles that range from evidence-free assertions that Vladimir Putin personally ordered last months chemical attack in Syria to a story entitled Brain specialist doctor believes Donald Trumps frontal lobe is failing based on a single tweet by a doctor. Along the way Palmer has collected more than 63 thousand Twitter followers and more than a few famous signal boosters.

Indeed, the site includes a Thank Yous section, a long list of liberal notables who have shared the sites stories. It includes MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid, Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe, novelist Joyce Carol Oates, director Rob Reiner, Trump foil Rosie ODonnell, and Mark Hamill Luke Skywalker. The Democratic California Congressman Ted Lieu is specially thanked for sharing a Palmer Report story on his official website.

Lieus office did not respond to a request for comment.

The site had its most significant exposure yet this week. As confusion swirled in Washington Wednesday following President Trumps firing of FBI director James Comey, Democratic Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey went on CNN to make an explosive claim: A grand jury had been empaneled in New York to investigate Trumps ties to Russia. (Another grand jury investigation, in Virginia, has been reported by CNN.)

Among the outlets that eagerly picked up the news were the Palmer Report and the Twitter feed of Louise Mensch, the anti-Trump crusader who has accused hundreds of people of being Russian agents, often with no evidence.

And what were Markeys sources for this alarming claim? According to a Guardian reporter and the Daily Caller, none other than the Palmer Report and Mensch themselves. Hours after making the claim, Markey was forced to apologize for spreading unsubstantiated information, and through a spokesman, to reveal that he had no direct knowledge of any New York investigation.

Markeys office did not respond to a request for comment.

And despite Markeys apology, as of Thursday afternoon, the Palmer Report headline read: U.S. Senator confirms grand jury is now underway in Donald Trump case in New York State.

Excerpt from:
Top Liberals Are Helping To Build An Anti-Trump Conspiracy Media - BuzzFeed News

Jon Erlichman and Ian Vandaelle, BNN

The Liberal government has begun its search for a CEO to lead Canadas new infrastructure bank. While the high profile position is expected to attract candidates from around the world, industry observers say the job will require a certain style of leader.

You would need someone with some grey hair, public respect, tons of energy, and the willingness to commit a lot of time, former Alberta Investment Management Co (AIMCo) CEO Leo De Bever told BNN in an email. This will likely be a thankless job.It requires someone with a very thick skin.

This week, former Ontario Teachers Pension Plan CEO Jim Leech met with recruiters overseeing the search for a chief executive. A source familiar with the search tells BNN the government is working with executive search firm Odgers Berndtson. Leech was brought on board by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to advise the government on the banks creation. The CEO will have to run the bank, write out a plan, hire people, create the right culture which will be so important, Leech told BNN in a television interview. Theres a lot of work to be done.

Canada Infrastructure Bank will be in business by next year: Leech

Jim Leech, Special Advisor to Prime Minister says the amount of infrastructure needed in Canada far outweighs the money that's available in grants. He tells BNN how the Canada Infrastructure Bank will help.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau originally unveiled the governments plan to create the bank during last falls economic update, following a recommendation from his Advisory Council on Economic Growth. The bank is expected to help fund massive infrastructure projects in Canada by attracting large institutions from around the world as partner investors. Its goal is to leverage up to five dollars in private money for each dollar the federal government puts in.

The government has said it plans to launch the infrastructure bank before the end of the year. Legislation for the bank is currently being is debated in the House of Commons.And, as BNN was first to report, the bank will be headquartered in Toronto, which is already home to several leading pension funds with a history of investing in infrastructure. The banks mandate is to invest $35 billion, with $15 billion available for projects that dont guarantee a full return on investment. The other $20 billion will be used to invest in equity or loans that wont count against the governments spending.

While the government has reached out to institutional investors globally about partnering with the bank, its unclear how much capital these global players are willing to commit. I think the key to martialing this kind of international interest will be the nature and quality of the projects that come to the bank for consideration, Mark Romoff, president and CEO of The Canadian Council for Public-Private Partnerships, told BNN in a television interview.

Meanwhile, opposition leaders have accused the Liberals of giving the private sector too much say in the banks creation.

The infrastructure bank boondoggle is just another taxpayer-funded Liberal vanity project, interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose recently said during question period. I know the Liberals are excited to impress their friends on Bay Street and Wall Street, but it is one thing to buy them tickets to a Broadway show. It is quite another thing to buy them a $35 billion bank.

To be honest, I could not come up with people that would have both the skills and the stomach, De Bever told BNN in an email.

I agree with Jim Leech that the CEO shouldbe someone with financial acumen and a great team leader, but I'd also add they should be strongly committed to ensuring the public/taxpayersget good value for their money and committed to transparency and accountability, Toby Sanger, an economist with the Canadian Union of Public Employees told BNN in an email.On this basis, I'd suggest Kevin Page, former Parliamentary Budget Officer, who embodiesall these qualities. Although, I suspect theyll probably go for a former banker, such as Ed Clark.

I have not been contacted, Kevin Page told BNN in an email. I have a great job. As for Clark, a source told BNN the banks creators have not reached out to him, nor would he be interested in the role.

One infrastructure investment executive who privately expressed interest in running the bank noted the CEO pick will also depend on the make-up of the banks board of directors.

The executive search firm has been retained to scour the world for qualified and interested candidates, said the executive, who asked not to be named. But the first order of business is a board and a chairperson. The board and its chair will have significant influence determining the skills, characteristics and experience desired of the CEO.

A healthy fit and working relationship between the chair and the CEO will be critical to success, Richard Leblanc, a governance professor at York University told BNN in an email. Former political leaders would have government interface ability, as well as consensus building ability, and an unblemished record, which is also needed. John Baird, who served as Foreign Affairs Minister in Stephen Harpers cabinet immediately come to mind. As does Frank McKenna, former Canadian Ambassador to the U.S. Ultimately, the party affiliation is not important, but rather the knowledge of government machinations, which is very complex.

When BNN contacted McKenna, who currently serves as deputy chairman at TD Bank, he said he has not been contacted and does not have interest in the position. As Baird, who is currently a senior advisor at Bennett Jones, he responded Lol...no, when asked by BNN about whether hes been contacted or has any interest in the position.

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Liberals hire Odgers Berndtson to find CEO for 'thankless job' of leading infrastructure bank - BNN