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To the layperson, Patrick Smith not only did nothing wrong but also did everything right.

Now, of course, he must pay the price.

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Asked to accept an appointment as temporary dean of the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law at Lakehead University at a time of crisis for the school, the Ontario Superior Court judge first asked his boss for her approval to take a leave, and that she ask her boss, the federal justice minister, for hers.

His boss, Chief Justice Heather Smith, wrote to Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, for her blessing. She got it, and gave her own.

At almost 69, Smith is a supernumerary judge (meaning part-time) so though she would miss him, the chief justice said, Smith didn’t count in her regular complement, and besides, some of the leave would be in the slow summer months.

The crisis at the law school was real.

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Only five years old, the law faculty, with Indigenous law one of its main focuses, had lost its dean — an Indigenous American woman and legal scholar named Angelique EagleWoman — in April of this year.