Ontario Attorney-General Doug Downey speaks to the assembly. The annual Opening of Courts was held today at the provincial courthouse at 361 University Ave. Multiple levels of courts in Ontario publicly rebuke the government for cutting legal aid funding at the annual opening of the courts ceremony. On hand for the ceremony were various judges, lawyers and government officials. September 10, 2019 Richard Lautens/Toronto Star

The Ford government is considering changing the way Ontario judges and justices of the peace are appointed, and giving the Attorney General more decision-making power in the process.

“I will be putting the names forward, I will be screening them, and I can tell you, they will be of the highest quality and it will allow us to create further diversity on the bench,” Attorney General Doug Downey told reporters at Queen’s Park on Monday about the potential model.

Under the current system, a judicial advisory committee sifts through all the received applications and conducts interviews with candidates. Two qualified individuals are then selected and put forward to the Attorney General for final selection and seal of approval.

But since Downey assumed his role in a June cabinet shuffle, he’s expressed displeasure with several sets of recommendations sent over to his office. By his own count, he’s sent three sets of names back to the advisory committee, claiming that the individuals chosen weren’t up to snuff.

“The committee should be saying who’s qualified and who’s not qualified, and then I should be responsible to put to Cabinet the person that I think, from the qualified bunch, that should be appointed,” Downey said Monday, later claiming that individuals were being excluded or choosing not to apply in the current model. “There are people who are applying and not getting interviews, and they’re qualified,” he added. (He also said he didn’t know who was applying.)

He didn’t specify a concrete number when asked by a reporter how many names he believed he should be receiving instead. When asked about the potential that such changes could pave the way for partisan appointments, Downey demurred.

“To say that they can’t trust the Attorney General to recommend somebody to a judgeship is to say that you should be trusting a committee that you don’t know. And I don’t think that’s right,” he replied to reporters.

But amid a year that has seen the Ford government embroiled in a high-profile patronage scandal, opposition leaders at Queen’s Park were quick to raise red flags.

“We have a government that clearly has a penchant for appointing their friends and insiders to plum positions,” NDP leader Andrea Horwath said on Monday.

Her comment appeared to reference the news, revealed earlier this year, that several lucrative government appointments had been given to individuals with personal ties to Doug Ford’s former chief of staff, Dean French.

READ MORE: Ford government introduces ‘cooling off’ period for special advisory appointments, in wake of cronyism scandal

That saga came months after the provincial PCs came under fire for the attempted appointment of Ron Taverner — a friend of Ford’s — as commissioner of the OPP. An integrity commission report this spring found that Ford didn’t break any rules in Taverner’s hiring. However, the commissioner also reported “some troubling aspects” to the “flawed” recruitment process.

The scandal involving French-linked individuals coming into government roles triggered a review of all pending appointments. Earlier this month, changes came into effect at Queen’s Park such as a 12-month “cooling off period” for special adviser appointments, and a new conflict-of-interest disclosure form to clamp down on potential cronyism.

“The judiciary needs to be completely separate from government. This government didn’t understand that about the police and the fact they don’t understand that about the judiciary apparently is very, very, very troubling,” Horwath said Monday. Interim Liberal leader John Fraser added that Ford’s own record of comments on the judiciary compounded his concerns.

At various points in his term, Ford has weighed in on the justice system. He falsely claimed last fall that a judge who ruled against his decision to cut city council was appointed by former Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty. He has urged some individuals found not criminally responsible for violent crimes, due to diagnosed mental health issues, to be locked up forever. And he’s called for those charged with gun-related offences to be denied bail. Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders has also recently drawn attention to the issue of bail and firearms.

READ MORE: Ford ignoring ‘innocent until proven guilty’: civil liberties group

“If he was inappropriately or incorrectly calling out Mr. McGuinty for appointing justices, I find it very odd then that he wants to start doing the same thing himself,” Horwath said.

If Downey wanted to make changes, Fraser urged the AG to start by exploring potential efficiencies in his own office.

“I know that’s a challenge for all ministers that have been there before, all former attorney generals,” Fraser said. “There’s always room for improvement, but the independence of the judiciary is fundamental to our democracy. So you have to be very careful about what you do when you’re proposing something new that blows it wide open.”

Downey is also exploring other potential changes, lamenting on Monday that the current system required a 20-page application and 14 hard copies.

“I can tell you, just on the judges alone, not even the JPs, that’s half a million piece of paper a year. That just does not make any sense any more,” he said.

For justices of the peace, meanwhile, he claimed it had recently taken a year to gather 888 applications, screen them, interview a selection, then put forward 20 recommendations to his office for 31 vacancies — at what he said was a cost of half a million dollars.