Crime doesn't pay - but justice sure does.

If you were to listen to New Brunswick Provincial Justice Minister, Stephen Horsman, one would be led to believe that there is some disorder in our courts – specifically regarding the amount of money provincial court judges are making.  A provincial court judge in New Brunswick currently makes a salary of $204,000 a year – certainly nothing to sneeze at – but it is the lowest pay for the position in the country. For sake of comparison, their colleagues in Ontario are making a whopping $280,000 a year; only $20,000 less than a Federal court judge hauls in.

Our New Brunswick magistrates are having a hard time keeping up with the Ontario Joneses with the pennies we’re paying them, it would appear. I could only hope that someone would pass the collection plate for these poor, unfortunate souls who are being forced to live on such a meager sum of money. That extra $80,000 a year would mean so much to these folks who are just scraping by in these rough times. I feel like we should start some sort of telethon, at the very least.

Have no fear, downtrodden residents of New Brunswick, Mr. Horsman has a plan! The Honorable Minister has recommended that the province increase the salaries of the 33 Provincial court judges by a whopping $36,000 to $43,000 a year – and guess where that money is going to come from! The public coffers funded by Mr. John and Jane New Brunswick, of course – who will throw all cares to the wind to ensure that our judges have the finest robes and gavels in the land.

As media personality Dennis Miller used to say, “I don’t want to go off on a rant here”, but I feel one coming on.

In a province that is absolutely swimming in debt, to the extent that the government is proclaiming that anywhere from $400 million to $600 million in cutbacks need to be made, why are any of our elected officials even entertaining the idea of paying out an additional $1.4 million a year on judge’s salaries?  There is no word to be used for this other than obscene.  The median household income in this province sits at a paltry $66,000 and we’re looking at giving some folks in politically appointed positions almost two thirds of that amount as a raise to their already generous salary. That is madness, folks.

These bureaucrats are the same bunch who want to go scorched earth when there are talks of wage increases for police, teachers or healthcare workers of one or two per cent. They’re the same group that is cutting funding to our schools and hospitals, and proclaiming that in order to solve this province’s deficit crisis we need to have an “all hands on deck” mentality – when what they really mean is all their hands in our pockets.

In New Brunswick where the minimum wage is a slight $10.30 an hour, an employee working 40 hours a week would gross less than $22,000 a year – about half of this proposed increase for our gavel banging friends behind the bench.  That minimum wage rate just increased, by the way, and one would think it was going to lead to total economic apocalypse the way hands were being publicly wrung about it.


What I want to know is what happened to all this fiscal restraint our new Premier, Brian Gallant was talking about right before the last election? What about the promises of no more waste? Oh, there are restraints alright, the figurative ones that will be used to hold us peons down while we bear the brunt of all these forthcoming governmental economic slashes and cutbacks.  The rich keep getting richer and the poor… well, we just keep taking it.

This province is broke, folks – on the verge of real bankruptcy, even. The mere thought of such an exorbitant increase to these judges’ salaries shouldn’t even be entertained, let alone carried out. I have seen some pretty outrageous acts by government in my lifetime, but this one may very well take the oft-referenced cake.

In one of my favorite movies of all time, 1976’s ‘Network’, the character Howard Beale makes an impassioned plea to viewers of his news program:

"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job… We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be."

He then continues with his suggestion to start turning the tide:

"All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING… My life has VALUE!’  I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

That’s how I feel right now, and this is how all residents of New Brunswick should feel.

The problem is that we’d likely end up in front of a judge if we took Howard’s advice.

How ironic.