UPDATE: A new article in Friday’s Globe reveals that the Federal Court will consider adjourning even more cases, and that some — including CARP, Canada’s Assocation for the 50-Plus — are calling for an end to mandatory retirement
An article in Thursday’s Globe and Mail reports that at least 11 immigration hearings have been adjourned this week after an eagle-eyed lawyer realized that the deputy judge set to hear his case was over the mandatory retirement age of 75.
Deputy judges are not presently bound by the age restrictions of their full-time Federal Court counterparts. But Rocco Galati — a defence lawyer who has received plenty of attention stemming from his former represention of terror suspects like Abdurahman Khadr, Omar’s brother — caught the apparent double-standard and used it to have his pending case adjourned. Several of his colleages have since followed his lead.
The Honourable Louis Tannenbaum, the deputy judge who was scheduled to hear Gatti’s client’s case, is 77. Six of the Federal Court’s seven deputy judges are over 75, according to the Globe — and two were appointed days after they reached that age. Canada’s Constitution Act (the original, 1867 version) mandates retirement at age 75 for all superior court judges.
But, according to the Federal Courts Act:
…any judge of a superior, county or district court in Canada, and any person who has held office as a judge of a superior, county or district court in Canada, may, at the request of the Chief Justice of the Federal Court made with the approval of the Governor in Council, act as a judge of the Federal Court, and while so acting has all the powers of a judge of that court and shall be referred to as a deputy judge of that court.
The Federal Court will rule on the issue next month. Behind the bench at that hearing: the Honourable Louis Tannenbaum.