The Ford Tornado in the Tribunal Justice Trailer Park – Bill of Particulars, Section ‘D’: Impartiality, also Abandoned

INTRODUCTION

This is Section ‘D’ of the Bill of Particulars, the Section that details the trailer-park damage inflicted by the Ford administration on the targeted tribunals’ impartiality credentials; damage which in the author’s view demonstrates that, like the independence credentials,  the Ford administration also ignored, disrespected – i.e. abandoned – the impartiality credentials.

This is the fifth post in the trailer-park damage series, and for those visitors who have come late to the party the first post may be found here, and the second here, and the third here, and the fourth here.

As previously described, in this series of posts the author has evoked the imagery of tornado damage in trailer parks as a means of calling out the appalling extent of the damage inflicted by the Ford administration on adjudicative tribunals in Ontario’s Tribunal Justice System in terms that could not be mistaken.

To focus on the nature of the damage, the first post identified the four “credentials” a tribunal must have to justify its positioning as a court-substitute in the rights-based resolution of disputes. Those credentials are: Independence, impartiality, expertise, and competence, and all four have been severely damaged. The first post promised subsequent postings of a Bill of Particulars detailing that damage. And, as indicated, this is Section D of that Bill of Particulars which addresses the final credential – impartiality.

THE BILL OF PARTICULARS

SECTION D: IMPARTIALITY, ALSO ABANDONED

IT’S A SHORT STORY

Impartiality is irretrievably tied to independence.  It is settled law that adjudicators cannot be impartial, or, what in law is just as important, cannot be seen to be impartial, if they are not seen to be independent.

So, when the Ford administration’s trailer-park storm blew the targeted tribunals’ independence credentials out the tribunal-justice park gate, their impartiality credentials went with them.

The extra damage to those credentials arising from the evidence that the process for selecting candidates for new appointments was not truly “competitive”, as the ATAGA Act required, but appeared, instead, to be influenced by irrelevant partisan considerations, just made  the abandonment of the impartiality credentials clearer.

STILL TO COME:

Summing up.

RE