[ql06] Irwin Cotler: Former firebrand now justice minister
- From: "Kenneth Campbell [QL06]" <2kc16@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <ql06@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 09:05:00 -0400
[The high regard for civil liberties will be interesting to watch in
action; assuming the Martin team doesn't backpedal itself out of
government. - Ken.]
Life and crimes of Irwin Cotler
Former firebrand now justice minister
Will activist past be a boon or baggage?
TRACEY TYLER
LEGAL AFFAIRS REPORTER
TORONTO STAR
Apr. 18, 2004
Irwin Cotler was sworn to secrecy. He'd just been told by Prime Minister
Paul Martin he was about to become Canada's justice minister. But apart
from his immediate family, he couldn't tell a soul.
As he approached Rideau Hall for the swearing-in ceremony last December,
however, the coast seemed clear. Taking out his cell phone, the first
person he called was his close friend Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard
University law professor who became a household name defending
celebrities such as O.J. Simpson and Claus von Bulow.
"It was a very low (pitched) call," Dershowitz recalled in a telephone
interview. "He said, 'Believe it or not, this was a secret until now. I
couldn't tell anyone.'"
They met while Cotler was in graduate studies at Yale University law
school in the 1960s "and we've been inseparable ever since," Dershowitz
said.
But while he and Cotler developed reputations for being outspoken civil
libertarians and defenders of sometimes-unpopular causes, there's one
important difference, he says.
"Everyone likes Irwin. He's such a sweet guy."
Well, not quite everyone.
Cotler, who turns 64 on May 8, is perhaps the only Canadian justice
minister in recent memory to be arrested and detained at least three
times.
He was kicked out of the Soviet Union in 1979 on his way to visit Natan
Sharansky, then a political dissident held in Siberia's Christopol
prison. The KGB called it an "espionage mission," and interrogated him
for hours before putting him on a plane out of the country.
Cotler was also arrested at a Vietnam War protest in Cambridge, Mass.,
in the 1960s. In 1981, after giving a speech in support of Nelson
Mandela, he was arrested and hauled in front of South Africa's
then-president, P.W. Botha, who questioned his thinking.
Cotler says the people he really admires are those who are willing to
confront evil and injustice, and ultimately triumph. His heroes include
Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish non-Jew credited with saving 100,000 Jews
during World War II, and, more recently, Said Ibrahim, a professor
jailed for human rights advocacy in Egypt.
"I happened to have represented him, so I know the courage he had
first-hand," Cotler said as he sat down with the Star during a visit to
Toronto. "He challenged the authorities, fought it out and was finally
acquitted."
Sometime soon, Cotler will be asked to decide whether the Steven
Truscott case is another such story. In a murder mystery that has
bedevilled Canadians for almost a half-century, Truscott, now 59, was
convicted and sentenced to hang for the strangulation death of Lynne
Harper, his 12-year-old classmate in Clinton, Ont., in 1959. The
Toronto-based Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted petitioned
the federal government to reopen the case and a report by retired Quebec
Court of Appeal judge Fred Kaufman is expected to be delivered to Cotler
this spring.
Cotler's in-the-trenches experience as a human rights lawyer and McGill
University law professor certainly gives him a perspective many of his
predecessors lacked. But in some cases, it can also add up to baggage,
making political life more complicated.
Canada's Muslim Lawyers' Association is taking a wait-and-see approach
toward Cotler, a former president of the Canadian Jewish Congress.
"Nobody's hostile, but everyone's cautious," said Irfan Syed, president
of the 100-member association, which was disappointed that Cotler
supported the federal anti-terrorism law.
On the other hand, Cotler only gave the law "two cheers." In an article
written at the time for the Globe and Mail, he criticized at least a
dozen aspects of the legislation, including elements of unfairness in
procedures set up for listing terrorist organizations.
Long before the government caved to public pressure, he was also calling
for an inquiry into the case of Maher Arar, the Syrian-born Canadian
deported by the U.S. to Syria. Late last year, however, Cotler announced
he was ending his involvement with the case because he had given the
Arar family legal advice before he became justice minister.
Meanwhile, Cotler is also facing criticism on unexpected fronts. Even
though he was counsel to the Deschenes commission on war criminals in
Canada and wants to make bringing war criminals to justice a priority,
Cotler was criticized in a recent CBC documentary for not doing enough
to track down suspected Serbian war criminals living in Ontario.
Some same-sex marriage supporters are also upset Cotler has expanded the
reference case on the issue, which is expected to be heard by the
Supreme Court of Canada next fall, to include a question of whether
denying same-sex couples the right to marry would violate the Charter of
Rights.
Even with all the controversy, Dershowitz says he's not surprised Cotler
traded academia for politics.
"Irwin has always been in politics," he says. "His life has been trying
to influence public policy."
That's not to say it's all work. When he lets his hair down, Cotler
likes to listen to rollicking klezmer music, especially the kind with
jazz undertones, inspired by the traditional tunes of itinerant Jewish
folk musicians.
Dershowitz says he's also devoted to his family, including his wife,
three grown daughters and a teenage son.
Cotler calls his son "an ever-humbling presence," who thought the high
point of his dad's career was when a TV newscast reported (erroneously)
that "POT-TV," a Web site devoted to marijuana, named him "Man of the
Year."
But law was clearly more than a career choice he fell into. Cotler says
he wanted to be a lawyer "as far back as I remember." He grew up in
Montreal as an only child in a home where the pressing social issues of
the day were never far from discussion.
Cotler's father, Nat, was a lawyer and friends with some of the leading
Montreal activists of the day, including future CCF and NDP leader David
Lewis and the poet A.M. Klein. His mother, Fay, who "abhorred bigotry in
all its forms," opened their home to people of all races and religions,
he says.
Growing up, the law and justice system seemed to be the focal point for
"all the actions and passions of the times," and, on some deeper level,
a mechanism for improving society.
His father in particular, he says, fostered that view through his
scholarly approach to his profession. "He used to read to me from the
great works of the leading jurists of our time," Cotler says. One of
them was the American Oliver Wendell Holmes, who famously said, "A
person who has not shared the actions and passions of his time is deemed
not to have lived."
If you want to know about Cotler's other influences, look to his
teachers.
In high school, his homeroom teacher was none other than Irving Layton,
future poet and wild man of the Canadian literary scene, who, back then,
was livening up chemistry and physics lessons with splashes of
philosophy.
Later, at McGill law school, Cotler studied under Frank Scott, the
socialist, poet and civil libertarian who was considered one of Canada's
great constitutional scholars and credited with shaping a generation of
Canadian lawyers. Scott taught Cotler's father (who kept his notes,
which Cotler dug out when he took the class). He also taught former
prime minister Pierre Trudeau and is credited as the one who actually
coined Trudeau's signature phrase, "a just society." Cotler says he very
much subscribes to the same goal and considers the law not just a set of
rules but a vehicle for "the reconstitution of society." His outlook
crystallized in August, 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I
have a dream" speech in Washington. Cotler was there.
"His voice still resonates and impacts on me today," he says.
When Cotler returned home after graduate school, he landed a job as
special assistant to John Turner, who was then Trudeau's justice
minister. He later went to McGill, where he ran the human rights
program, but was never far from the courtroom.
As a lawyer, Cotler won Quebec prisoners the right to vote, pushed for
prosecutors to consider charging RCMP officers involved in a dirty
tricks campaign in the 1970s and tried to stop cruise missile testing in
Canada and lost.
His forte, however, was defending political prisoners around the world
who were jailed for opposing government policies or expressing
unfavourable political opinions. His clients also included Mandela and
another Nobel Peace Prize winner Andre Sakharov.
One thing in particular Cotler would like to do as justice minister is
resurrect an idea from his Turner days, setting up an advisory council
to the justice minister. As Turner's special assistant, Cotler helped
establish something similar in the early 1970s, which brought together
"the best and brightest" legal minds for a two-day brainstorming session
in Montebello, Que. They emerged with a "manifesto for law reform,"
which helped lead to the creation of the Law Reform Commission of
Canada, the federal court system, new bail laws, provincial legal aid
programs and neighbourhood legal clinics staffed by law students,
including Parkdale Legal Services in Toronto.
But can a guy with an eye on the big picture have patience for the
meat-and-potato issues that can occupy a justice minister's file? Cotler
admits he has no clue how e-mails or computers work. Is something like
courtroom technology even on his radar? Will the problems of court
delays seem a crashing bore? Somehow, says Dershowitz, Cotler will find
a way to embrace those issues, perhaps even tying them into something
larger.
"Irwin is interested in everything," he says. "If you ask him, he will
tell you, `The Bible says you do not delay justice.'"
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