The claim is either that the court (especially the Supreme Court) is stacked with Liberal appointees, and is therefore acting in concert with the Liberal party's wishes, or that the courts are trying to undermine the democratic will of Parliament:
"I think it's a typical hidden agenda of the Liberal party... They had the courts do it for them, they put the judges in they wanted, then they failed to appeal -- failed to fight the case in court... I think the federal government deliberately lost this case in court and got the change to the law done through the back door."
- Stephen Harper, attacking the Liberals on same-sex marriage by claiming a conspiracy, News Hound, September 7th 2003.
Of course, what the CPC - and other pseudo-informed critics of the Supreme Court of Canada - forget is that ultimately, the job of the court is to interpret the laws of the land as legislated by the Parliament. This includes - to nobody's great surprise - the Constitution. What the CPC keeps overlooking is that it is entirely conceivable that legislators might just write something that is at odds with some aspect or another of another law - and when that law is the Constitution, it's a might bit more difficult to "work around" than simply inserting a legislative amendment. (As the Meech Lake and Charlottetown experiences pointed out, changing the Constitution itself is much more difficult)
Politicizing our judicial selection process by subjecting candidates to a public grilling on their opinions does nothing to assess the ability of the candidate to interpret law.
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