Be careful what you wish for.When Caroline Mulroney first announced her candidacy for Ontario’s 2018 election, the future was hers. Back then, she publicly supported official Progressive Conservative policies on an updated sex education curriculum, a carbon tax, and the rule of law.Until she didn’t.Eclipsed by Doug Ford in this year’s leadership race, she folded on carbon pricing. Still, she stood her ground on sex-ed.Until she didn’t.When Ford triumphed, he made her attorney general and, thus rewarded, she revised her position on our sex-ed culture wars and the carbon clash with Ottawa. Still, she vowed to defend the rule of law.Until she didn’t.Now, instead of distinguishing herself as a judicious defender of law and order, she is discrediting herself as the enabler of an injudicious premier. Instead of comporting herself as chief law officer of the crown, she is conflating her role with that of Ford factotum.Mulroney is not solely responsible for the Ford fiasco, whereby the premier has invoked the “notwithstanding” clause of the Charter of Rights for the first time ever in Ontario. But by virtue of her unique cabinet position, she bears a higher burden to rein in recklessness, to oppose arbitrariness, to advocate for the rule of law, to remind us of political norms and constitutional conventions (see: U.S. President Donald Trump versus Attorney General Jeff Sessions).Consider, for example, the primacy of freedom of association, the principle of non-interference in democratic elections, the practice that judges should be respected and not reviled. Where is the attorney general when Ford flouts legal conventions and lashes out at the judiciary?When the premier demonizes judges as political appointees who dare not judge him, let alone overrule him — claiming that an elected premier reigns supreme until the next vote, free from judicial scrutiny — does the attorney general not caution him, counter him, or con ...
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