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Translation: Paying an Ecuadorian judge $500,000 to pretend you didn’t write his judgment for him doesn’t qualify as “exceptional circumstances.” Protecting Canadians from fraudulent foreign courts is less important than dutifully keeping up international appearances.

It all sounds very Canadian.

Thankfully, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled last month that Chevron Canada’s assets are not available to satisfy the Ecuadorian judgment; that this is not an appropriate case to pierce the corporate veil of a Canadian company that is a completely separate business entity with nothing to do with what allegedly happened with Texaco in Ecuador. The court also stated that Chevron Canada could defend itself using reference to the findings of corruption and fraud against the plaintiffs by the U.S. judge. Score one for the rule of law.

Our judicial system should not have allowed Chevron Canada to be dragged into court in the first place. Why pay more respect to a corrupt Ecuadorian judgment than to the decision of Judge Kaplan in the United States, which was upheld on appeal? Why ignore the findings that the plaintiffs engaged in illegal acts in procuring the Ecuadorian court judgment?

If Canadian nicety is willing to sacrifice the rule of law for the sake of international congeniality, every single multinational corporation in Canada should be terrified what new judgments will issue from corrupt courts in corrupt Third World countries. Because in Canada, we’ll apparently get to hear them all.

Jay Cameron is a lawyer with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms