Dougie Went a-Courtin'

March 20, 2024·45 min·3 clips

Ford declares 'I'm appointing like-minded people that believe in what we believe in, keeping the bad guys out of jail,' then doubles, triples, and quadruples down on successive days.

Ontario's judicial appointments story starts with lobbyists, which tells you plenty about the mood of the segment. One appointee is described as working around weapons-related lobbying, federal vending matters, and Ontario manufacturing-noise issues. That mix makes the committee optics feel messy before anyone even gets to the judges. John Fraser calls it a bad look to appoint a gun lobbyist to a panel that helps pick judges. The line lands because the panel is not just ceremonial. It has a role in choosing judges, and the hosts place that beside Doug Ford's talk about tougher sentencing and judges who keep people locked up longer. Then Brock Vandrick adds another wrinkle. He is described as lobbying provincially for the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, with federal work touching gun regulation. The symmetry is almost too neat, and the hosts seem aware that the term may stretch a bit. Even so, they keep coming back to the same awkward mix: tough-on-crime rhetoric on one side, lobbying interests near gun manufacturers, hunting groups, and firearm regulation on the other. Nobody sounds stunned. The tone is more tired than shocked, as if this is another familiar Ontario process story with a fresh coat of bad optics. The committee still matters, though the conversation does not settle for the easiest outrage beat. Appointment power only matters if it can meaningfully change who becomes a judge. One host has trouble believing the government can simply drag judicial picks far away from the kinds of candidates who would have surfaced anyway. That doubt is procedural, not soft. If a judge wants to be a good judge, the host suggests, partisanship may not do as much work as the political framing wants, even if nobody is free of ideology. So the issue has two parts: gun-adjacent lobbyists near judicial selection in a tough-on-crime climate, and the quieter possibility that the machinery of judging may resist capture better than the performance around it suggests.

As heard by us

A brisk Ontario politics read on Doug Ford's court appointments, gun-linked lobbying, and how much the province can actually change.

Wag the Doug digs into Doug Ford's judicial appointment fight by looking at who is being put near the process, not just the slogan around it. The most pointed bit is the uneasy match between Ford's tough-on-crime pitch and appointees discussed as lobbyists with firearm-related…

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You want to understand why this judge-picking panel looks like such a bad look.

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