Crown Attorneys, the Attorney General, and Judicial Discipline: A Comment on Lauzon v Ontario (Justices of the Peace Review Council)

Should the consequences for judicial misconduct be different depending solely on the identity of the person who makes a complaint? In a surprising decision, the Ontario Court of Appeal in Lauzon v Ontario (Justices of the Peace Review Council) holds that dispositions downstream from complaints by Crown attorneys (or any other member of the executive branch of government) should be lower than other dispositions because the vindication of such complaints is inherently dangerous to judicial independence and the separation of powers. In this comment, I look closely at the reasoning in Lauzon and respectfully suggest that that reasoning is problematic. In particular, I note that judicial councils operate independently and that Crown attorneys are subject to high standards as identified both by courts and by law societies as their professional regulators. I also suggest that the identification of this novel proposition was unnecessary to decide the appeal.