Chris Selley: Our supreme court's chief justice is a busted flush. What will we do about it?
'I don't know who paid for that, so how can there be a conflict of interest?'
That hall-of-fame, mic-drop Canadian quote, delivered to National Post's Christopher Nardi this week, came from no less an authority than the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Richard Wagner.
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The thing Wagner supposedly doesn't know who paid for is a hideous bronze bust of himself that sits in the entrance hall of the Supreme Court building, where it breaks at least two longstanding traditions: one, that only former chief justices get publicly busted; and two, that the busts indicate their provenance.
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Let us pause here to consider the proposition Canada's most senior jurist has placed before us, in public, as if he thought he was defending himself effectively.
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We are to believe he just showed up to work one morning to find himself immortalized in bronze in the lobby of his office, and not only did he not know where this bronze bust came from, but at no point in the many months since it showed up has he bothered to inquire where it came from.
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'The Chief Justice's bust was donated to the Court by a donor who specifically asked to remain anonymous. For this reason, the plaque bears no mention of the donor. We have no information on the cost of the bust,' the Supreme Court's executive legal officer Stéphanie Bachand told National Post last year. 'Neither the Chief Justice nor the court's administration know about the donor's identity.'
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If you believe that — and far be it from me to suggest you should doubt the word of a fine, upstanding, Jesuit-educated judge such as Wagner — then isn't that a bit of a problem in itself? Canada's decider-in-chief wasn't even a bit curious? Can anyone just donate a grotesque likeness of a Supreme Court justice, FedEx it to the Supreme Court, and expect it to be prominently on display when they show up a week later?
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It's not as though Wagner doesn't take ownership of the court's other general affairs. At the same press conference Wednesday where he disavowed any knowledge of how the unexpected statuary arrived, he updated reporters on the renovation schedule for the Supreme Court building, and confirmed the court would be hearing cases in Halifax in 2027. He also wants new robes for the justices, because that was definitely the squeaky wheel that needed greasing.
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