OTTAWA— Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will announce his selection for a vacant seat on Canada’s top court Wednesday.

In an invitation sent to faculty and students at the University of Ottawa law school, Trudeau revealed he’ll name the person to fill the Supreme Court of Canada seat that, by tradition, has been held by a judge representing the West.

That invitation said the nominee will participate in a question-and-answer session, likely held by an ad hoc parliamentary committee on Dec. 5.

It is widely believed that Trudeau wants to make history with this appointment, possibly by appointing Canada’s first Indigenous Supreme Court judge.

Many have speculated about a possible appointment of Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, who became Saskatchewan’s first female Aboriginal judge when she was named to the provincial court in 1998.

An accomplished legal scholar, Turpel-Lafond has a doctorate in law from Harvard, has taught and written extensively on Indigenous law and law reform. She gained a national profile in her work as B.C.’s children’s advocate.

However, some in the legal community have also suggested to the Star she would appear not to meet certain qualifications set out in the Supreme Court Act. That act says a Supreme Court judge is someone “who is or has been a judge of a Superior Court of a province, or a barrister or advocate of at least 10 years standing at the bar of a province.”

Turpel-Lafond was admitted to the Nova Scotia bar in 1991, and was named to Saskatchewan’s provincial court bench — which is not a Superior Court — in 1998, after seven years at bar. Her appointment could spur some of the kinds of objections that met the past Conservative government’s appointment of Marc Nadon to a Quebec seat on the court.

Other possible names that have floated around the legal community for several weeks are Alberta Court of Appeal Justice Sheilah Martin and Saskatchewan Court of Appeal’s Justice Georgina Jackson.

An independent judicial advisory committee offered the prime minister a short list from which to choose.

Earlier Tuesday, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould told reporters she was honoured to recommend a candidate to the prime minister after receiving the shortlist.

“It’s his decision, but we clearly laid out criteria around a very meritorious jurist, one that's functionally bilingual and reflects the diversity of Canada,” she said.

In June, the Trudeau government elevated Sheilah Martin from the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench, Alberta’s superior trial court, to the Court of Appeal. She also sits as a judge of the Court of Appeal for the Northwest Territories and the Court of Appeal of Nunavut.

Georgina Jackson was named to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal in 1991. Prior to that, she had been a practicing lawyer and worked at the province’s department of justice in the property registration branch. She is regarded as an expert in judicial ethics.

It is not clear whether Trudeau will make the bold move of elevating someone from outside the Supreme Court of Canada straight into the chief justice’s job, or wait until after Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin retires to name that person from sitting judges on the bench, as has been custom.

An informal tradition has seen the chief justice’s job alternate between francophone and anglophone judges, which has the effect of also alternating between a common law judge and a civil law judge. However, that custom has been dropped on occasion, most recently by Trudeau’s father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, when he was prime minister.

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The opening on the high court was created when McLachlin announced her retirement, effective Dec. 15.

Trudeau invited applications from functionally bilingual candidates from the West and North to replace McLachlin who, although she was born and raised in Pincher Creek, Alta., was a B.C. judge when she was first appointed in 1989 by then Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney.

It was a Liberal prime minister, Jean Chrétien, who made her chief justice, the first woman to hold that position. She has spent 17 years in that post, making her Canada’s first female and longest-serving chief justice.

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