Ontario’s attorney general has announced the government’s long-awaited changes to the judicial appointments process, unveiling a plan critics promptly decried as both unnecessary and open for abuse.

The proposed changes announced Thursday would require the independent judicial appointments advisory committee — made up of judges, lawyers and members of the public — to submit a shortlist of six candidates to the attorney general to fill a judicial vacancy, up from the current shortlist of at least two. The attorney general would also be entitled to send the shortlist back and ask the committee for the next six names, as he is currently permitted to do with the two-name shortlist.

Attorney General Doug Downey has spoken publicly for months about wanting to revamp the way provincial court judges are appointed, saying the process is complex and opaque. It’s put him at odds with the province’s major legal organizations, which say the existing system has produced quality, merit-based appointments.

The plan, which will still need to pass the legislature, walks back some of the government’s controversial proposals that were floated to legal groups in a “consultation paper” obtained by the Star in January. That paper had suggested the attorney general would be able to see the full list of candidates for a judicial vacancy, including those deemed “not qualified,” and he would be able to order the committee to re-assess a not qualified candidate.

The government decided to drop that idea from its final proposal.

“It got complicated where it raised concerns for people, and integrity is key to the system and so it made sense not to leave it in the proposed changes,” Downey told the Star in an interview, saying he’d consulted with multiple groups and individuals on the changes. “We didn’t want to raise any concern that anybody but the committee makes the decision on who is recommended or not recommended. That’s exactly why we left it out of the final proposal.”

In a move criticized by legal organizations, the system proposed Thursday would allow the attorney general to see the names of all candidates the committee deems “recommended” and “highly recommended.” Under the current system, he only gets to see the shortlist.

A concern, critics say, is that the attorney general could continue to reject the ranked shortlist until he gets the candidate he wants.

“It permits the attorney general of the day to exercise political control over the appointment and undermines the independent role of the expert (committee),” said Scott Maidment, president of the Advocates’ Society, a national organization of lawyers.

“If the attorney general didn’t want to appoint any of the six people on the shortlist, but preferred somebody down at No. 24, they simply keep requesting another list until they get to the person they want”

Maidment said the provision opens the process up to politicization, and risks undermining the public’s confidence in the independence of judges.

“The more you politicize a judicial appointment process, the greater the risk of the public coming to see judges not as independent arbiters who apply the law to the facts, but rather as collections of individuals who are appointed because of their political viewpoints that align with the government of the day,” he said.

In his interview with the Star, Downey maintained it was “appropriate” that he see the recommended list, as he is accountable to the legislature for the appointments of judges and justices of the peace.

That “makes no sense,” said William Trudell, chair of the Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers, adding: “Well, it makes a lot of sense if you don’t like the process and want to appoint who you want to appoint.”

“Let’s say, for the purpose of discussion that this attorney general would never appoint anyone for patronage or the wrong reasons, but what about the attorney after that, or the one after that?” asked Trudell, a former member of the appointments advisory committee. “This is a fundamental change to the independence of the judiciary.”

Under the proposed changes, the government, which already appoints seven of the committee’s 13 members, will also be able to appoint the representatives from three legal organizations, selecting from lists of candidates submitted by each organization. Currently, each of those organizations appoints their own representative to the committee.

The legal groups were in agreement with some of the more minor changes being proposed by the government, including making the application process electronic and requiring the committee to publish diversity statistics about candidates.

But they all highlighted that there had been no calls for the system to be significantly modified — the Ontario Court of Justice has previously described the process as the “gold standard” and internationally recognized.

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“The system was not broken. They recently appointed three terrific candidates to the bench who were given to them by the committee and who represented diversity, quality, and the specific needs of the justice system,” said John Struthers, president of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association.

When pressed on who exactly has been calling for changes to the appointments process, Downey said:

“It wasn’t an area where people were writing to the newspapers, but I can tell you that individuals were frustrated. It’s complex, it’s not transparent as much as it should be, and some people were dissuaded from applying because of that.”