Last Thursday’s SSMU Council approved three referendum questions concerning the Judicial Board (J-Board), in a continuation of attempts to bring the J-Board’s activities into compliance with Quebec law while retaining its value as an unbiased student body. The J-Board was recently discovered to be working against Quebec law due to regulations that require the SSMU Board of Directors (BoD) to be the highest authority in SSMU.
The first referendum question involves amendments to the SSMU Constitution that will clarify that the J-Board is not the highest authority in the society. Instead, it will recommend rulings to the Legislative Council, which will only be considered binding when they receive ratification from the BoD. However, the BoD will only be able to overturn the decision of the J-Board by a 4/5 majority, in order to retain the J-Board’s value as an unbiased body.
The question of J-Board reform was contentious for some members of the gallery. Former SSMU President Zach Newburgh questioned whether the J-Board actually violates Quebec law.
“An independent judiciary is a value that’s enshrined in liberal democracies,” Newburgh said. “This referendum question in particular decides to destroy that value in the context of the Student Society of McGill University. If we are comfortable with doing that, then you may pass this referendum question and put it to a vote of students, and effectively downvote democracy through democracy.”
SSMU President Maggie Knight, however, asserted her trust in their lawyer, who detailed the legal concerns regarding the J-Board in a memo to VP University Affairs Emily Yee Clare on Jan. 25.
“To my knowledge we have no reason to doubt the competence of our legal counsel,” she said. “We have already met as a council and as a Board of Directors to discuss our concerns about what [have] been described to us as ambiguities between our constitution and Quebec law… out of what I understand to be due diligence to protect the SSMU from liability.”
Clare emphasized the fact that SSMU has not relied solely on the advice of one lawyer, but also showed the referendum questions to the members of the J-Board.
“They were very open to all the changes we proposed,” Clare said. “So in addition to our legal counsel, we have also had approximately six law students look at it as well.”
The second referendum question, which addresses the procedural accountability of the J-Board, seeks to make the J-Board’s rules of practice publically available to all members of SSMU.
The final and most contended referendum question addressed the composition of the J-Board, which is currently formed by five McGill students who have completed at least four semesters in the faculty of law. The referendum question would see the addition of two non-law students to the board, with the condition that these students must have never held a political position on campus.
Debate on the referendum question stemmed mainly from the question of whether students with no legal training would be capable of addressing the type of cases addressed by the J-Board.
“I think that there are people who are not in the faculty of law with the ability to interpret procedures and to engage in such discussions,” Knight said. “This is really just intended to bring an additional level of scope to the representation on the Judicial Board while clearly stating that the majority must always be members who have some degree of legal expertise.”
However, some representatives felt that the J-Board does not need the additional students.
“I think an important thing to keep in mind is that the J-Board is not a representative body,” Arts Representative Justin Fletcher said. “I think this might create potential conflicts of interest and [set] a bad precedent.”
Students can vote on these referenda during the winter elections period starting Mar. 8.
