Heidi Matthews is Assistant Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School where she co-directs the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security. Her research focuses on international criminal law and law and sexuality.
Effectively addressing the continued impact of Canada’s history requires decolonizing Canadian law; in other words, imagining what Canadian law could be if it had not been directed toward the destruction of Indigenous nations, cultures and laws. Indigenous justice advocates have long called for an Indigenous appointment, and the MMIWG report specifically “called upon federal, provincial, and territorial governments to increase Indigenous representation in all Canadian courts, including within the Supreme Court of Canada.”
In part this is unsurprising, given that Kasirer is filling one of three Supreme Court seats required by law to be held by a member of the Quebec bar. In 2014 the Court held that its composition, as provided for in the Supreme Court Act, is constitutionally entrenched and can only be altered with “the unanimous consent of Parliament and the provincial legislatures.”
I nominate Jody Wilson Raybould.
Bull Manure Heidi.