º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍø

Ever since winning power seven years ago, Ford has crossed every line by maligning judges and undermining judicial independence. Yet this week’s rant — caricaturing courtroom judges as “unelected� lily-livered patsies who lack legitimacy — was so wrong constitutionally and wrong-headed politically that something had to give.

And so Ontario’s three chief justices gave as good as they got.

In an unmistakable and unprecedented missive, they cautioned Ford to stay in his constitutional lane. It amounted to a cease-and-desist order in writing from on high, putting the premier in his place — and exhorting him to know his place.

Their impassioned appeal was addressed to every person in Ontario, but admonished one Ontarian in particular — the premier of the province — not by naming him but by timing their statement to his outburst. It was issued on court letterhead late in the day Wednesday, mere hours after Ford’s tirade.

Entitled “,� it had their three signatures: Michael Tulloch, Chief Justice of Ontario; Geoffrey Morawetz, Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Justice; and Sharon Nicklas, Chief Justice of the Ontario Court of Justice.

All judges must operate “without interference or influence of any kind from any source, including politicians,� they declared (my italics, their words).

It was a very public reply to a very intemperate politician. They might as well have written, “J’accuse!�

They attacked Ford’s premise that his latest electoral mandate from the people somehow trumps the independence of the judiciary in our constitutional democracy. A court of law is not the court of public opinion, and trials are not popularity contests

Judges render their verdicts “whether popular or not,� they lectured our populist premier, who harbours a pathological anti-bail bias. “Judicial decisions are made without bias.�

So what did the premier say this week that provoked this rapid-fire riposte from the bench for the first time in our history?

Ford mocked the independence of “unelected� judges as “a joke,� delivering a self-styled “rant� against their supposedly undemocratic power — hence the civics lesson on our democratic separation of powers from the chief judges.

“We get elected democratically. Last time I checked, there hasn’t been any judges elected,� Ford mused. “We should do what the U.S. does. Let’s start electing our judges, holding them accountable.�

What’s especially bizarre is the case that triggered him — not some horrific crime spree but a temporary injunction precluding Ontario from ripping up bike lanes until a Charter of Rights challenge can be heard. The irony of Ford’s “democracy� hypocrisy is that, as premier, he is so imperiously overruling a decision by democratically elected councillors at city hall on where to place those bike lanes.

“They overturn everything, right down to the bike lanes,â€� Ford fumed, “not because of law, because of ideology.â€� To be sure, that rant applies more to Ford’s ideological blinkers than any bias by Justice Paul Schabas of Ontario Superior Court, who granted the injunction (disclosure: Schabas was one of the Star’s lawyers for years, so I’m an unabashedly biased admirer of his non-ideological judiciousness).

Imagine if our populist premier had delivered his “rant for the day� before election day last February. Voters would have rightly punished him for promoting American-style frontier justice, where candidates for the bench solicit funds from developers for campaign ads pandering to anti-crime hysteria.

Such a Trump-style attack on judges would have undercut Ford’s campaign persona as a defender of Canadian values. Fortuitously for Ford, most voters may have forgotten his previous outbursts going back to 2018, when he first lashed out at a judge who dared to second guess the premier’s poorly timed decision to halve the size of º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøcity council in the middle of a municipal election campaign:

“I was elected. The judge was appointed,� he said then.

The problem with Ford’s perennial trolling and transgressing is that it becomes routine. After which the criticism from legal experts and opposition politicians feels anticlimactic.

Which is why the stern response from the top leaders of our judicial branch was so bracing, impactful and thoughtful. Indeed, it was reminiscent of the statement issued by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts last March as a counterpoint to the president’s unconscionable attacks on American judges.

It is a recurring theme in America, and now in Ontario. Just this week, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the U.S. Supreme Court’s newest member, spoke out against the targeting of judges that “ultimately risks undermining our constitution and the rule of law.�

Ford and his supporters always recoil at any comparison to the U.S. president’s antics. But in his attacks on judges the premier appears to be channelling his own inner Trump.

If you don’t believe me, believe the judges. Our Ontario judges.