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Ontario’s attorney general will neither condemn nor support Premier Doug Ford’s suggestion that a provincial judge should apologize for her instructions to the jury in the trial of Umar Zameer.
The high-profile case saw Zameer acquitted of first-degree murder in the death of Det. Const. Jeffrey Northrup, a plainclothes officer who was fatally run over in downtown Toronto in the summer of 2021.
During the case, the judge called into question the testimony of three central witnesses — all Toronto police detectives — in the Crown’s argument, suggesting they lied and colluded.
Then, last month, an Ontario Provincial Police investigation into the allegation cleared the Toronto officers. It was a conclusion Zameer’s lawyer vehemently contested.
After the investigation was published, both the Toronto police union president and Premier Ford said the judge should apologize for suggesting the officers had lied.
Ford, specifically, said the veteran judge “should apologize for accusing (the officers) of everything under the sun.”
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The comments came before MPPs returned to the legislature. Now, roughly two weeks later, Attorney General Doug Downey, who serves in Ford’s cabinet and oversees the judicial system, refused to be drawn on the issue.
Asked if the premier should have weighed into the issue, Downey said he was “not commenting on that.”
The province’s top lawyer also declined to say if the judge should apologize or if he had received complaints from legal groups.
“It sounds like a line of questioning that I’m not commenting on,” Downey responded when asked if the premier’s comments had made his job harder.
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said the premier was putting his attorney general in a difficult position by weighing in on judicial decisions and process.
“It means the attorney general is stuck, once again, picking up the pieces for a premier who’s out of control,” she said. “And that’s what this government is always doing, right? Protect the king at all costs.”
The calls for the judge to apologize elicited a rare rebuke from Ontario’s chief justice, who said an independent judiciary is a “cornerstone of our constitutional democracy” in a statement.
“It would be inappropriate and unethical for judges to succumb to outside pressure to modify or qualify their decisions or reasons,” the chief justice wrote in a March 19 statement.
The Federation of Ontario Law Associations was among the legal organizations to issue a similar statement, pointing directly to Ford and the police union president’s calls for an apology.
“These statements are appalling and an inappropriate attack on judicial independence. These statements are an unconcealed attempt to subvert the justice system,” the group said.
Ontario Liberal interim leader John Fraser said the premier’s demand was wrong, and that the attorney general didn’t defend it because he may also be uncomfortable with the intervention.
“He’s the top lawmaker in Ontario; he knows it’s wrong. He knows it’s wrong,” he said. “His boss shouldn’t have said that… It was wrong. The attorney general knows that.”
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