OTTAWA —
A landmark legal battle over the independence of judges responsible for overseeing military courts martial has gone meta with new questions over the autonomy of a judge hearing the case.
The Court Martial Appeal Court of Canada hearing revolves around then-defence chief Jonathan Vance’s decision two years ago to task an officer under his own command with disciplining the country’s four military judges.
Three of those four military judges later stayed several cases, saying Vance’s order impinged upon their independence and thus robbed service members accused of wrongdoing of their right to fair trials.
The question of whether military judges are independent was subsequently sent to the Court Martial Appeal Court, where three civilian judges including Chief Justice Richard Bell heard arguments from both sides in the winter and was set to make a ruling.
But now lawyers for the accused in seven affected cases want permission to submit new evidence and argue Bell is not sufficiently independent. That evidence includes Bell’s own statements to a judicial commission this month about his lack of independence.
Bell specifically flagged the fact that all justices on the military Appeal Court are required to be sitting judges in other courts at the same time. In his case, Bell is a sitting Federal Court judge in New Brunswick.
“Membership as a judge or even chief justice of the CMACC is dependent upon membership as a judge of another source court,” reads…
