[JURIST] Canada's highest-ranking judges have criticized the Conservative government's changes to the regional panels that screen candidates for federal judgeships [JURIST report] as a threat to judicial independence. The Canadian Judicial Council (CJC) [official website], made up of the chief justices and associate chief justices of Canada's superior courts, issued a statement [text] Tuesday saying that "judges can continue to participate in the deliberations of the Advisory Committees, but only if the principle of judicial independence is respected and judicial candidates are recommended strictly on the basis of merit." The provincially-based advisory committees [backgrounder], which work in secret, include seven voting members representing judges, lawyers and the public. Because four of those members - up from 1 in 1988 and 3 in 1994 - are now appointed by Canada's federal Justice Minister, the CJC statement said that:

the advisory committees may neither be, nor seen to be, fully independent of the government. This puts in peril the concept of an independent body that advises the government on who is best qualified to be a judge. Judicial independence is not the private right of judges but the foundation of judicial impartiality and a constitutional right of all Canadians.