The long-delayed Provincial Court appointments miraculously appeared on Thursday. They take effect the day after St. Valentine’s Day.
Lois Skanes, from the Premier’s old chambers on Duckworth Street, is going straight from her office to a plum seat on the bench in St. John’s without having to do any time at all dispensing justice in the nethermost reaches of the land.
Mike Madden, a St. John’s federal prosecutor, is headed to Suburbia in the Woods to assist One Judge Short in his labours.
Jackie Brazil – most recently seen in public carrying crappy briefs from her masters in cabinet to Madame Justice Cameron – will be sitting in Harbour Grace.
"If you're not receiving your instructions from Mr. Thompson [a former clerk of the Executive Council], then can you tell me whether or not your instructions come from the attorney general, for example[?]" Cameron [asked] Brazil.
After a lengthy pause, Brazil said only that she represented the government.
No word - yet - on what happened to the fellow who was in Harbour Grace until now, former director of public prosecutions Colin Flynn.
Readers of these scribbles will note that there is no appointment to the bench in Grand Falls-Windsor. That would be the one where Don Singleton was supposed to go as part of a rather curious little appointment daisy chain that ultimately led to Singleton withdrawing from the whole process. This tends to confirm the belief the appointment of a judge in GFW wasn’t necessary in the first place.
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