Coyne's Imagination Deployed in Attempt to Save Him on C-232

I don't want to give away all of this week's extremely entertaining Coyne column on C-232, full of his rich imaginings, signifying less than nothing, as usual when trapped (all columnists' prerogative, I admit), but it is worth quoting this particular rêverie, which is his last redoubt when routed by reason: "The implications are alarming - not only a general decline in the quality of the judges, but the effective exclusion of the West from consideration." Perhaps my eyes fail me, or the relevant clauses are written in invisible ink, perceptible only to Coyne & his ilk, but try as I might, I can't see where the text of C-232 overturns the ironclad constitutional convention on appointments: "By convention, the remaining six positions are divided in the following manner: three from Ontario, two from the western provinces (typically one from British Columbia and one from the Prairie Provinces, which in turn rotates amongst the three, although Alberta is known to cause skips in the rotation) and one from the Atlantic provinces, alternating between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick." Perhaps Coyne remains unaware of the many perfectly qualified bilingual judges from the West? Allow me enlighten him, and others, once again, via Joe Comartin:

I had better put this on the record. I sat through the last four appointments to the Supreme Court. The last two rounds have been the prairie provinces and then the Maritimes. We're sworn to secrecy in sitting on those panels, but the reality is that there were more than enough candidates—I don't think I'm disclosing any surprises here—from both of those jurisdictions to meet that high test of bilingualism. I don't think I can say anything more than that without going into the specifics of their credentials, but there was not a problem with having a significant number of qualified candidates.

As for diminished quality, my ears must be as poor as my eyes, or I am not reading and listening sufficiently, or such complaints are top secret and Coyne is of one the few to be able to read the invisible ink or hear the otherwise indecipherable secret frequencies through which such things are disclosed, since I am surprised, examining the empirical evidence, to hear of such complaints about the quality of ALL OUR OTHER FEDERAL COURTS which are ALL fully bilingual. Or perhaps, just maybe, Coyne's rich imagination has run away with him again? Or he is unaware there is a large stable of bilingual judges at the highest levels, from all regions of the country, ready and waiting to be appointed to the Supreme Court? Then allow me to quote Senator Tardif, to educate him and the other sadly ignorant:

Parliament has recognized the need for any federal court, including the Tax Court of Canada, the Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal, to be able to conduct proceedings in French as well as in English by appointing judges who understand both official languages without the need for an interpreter. Ironically, there is only one exception: the Supreme Court.

The rest of Coyne is an attempt to prove, contrary to all evidence and study, that the simplest passive language skills, to be able to listen, perhaps to read, are exactly equivalent to the more demanding active language skills of talking and writing. Coyne's hypothesis is extremely novel in the field of linguistics, to say the least, and I would encourage one espousing such original thinking to do further research on the matter - if he was right, he would be overturning pretty much all established linguistics and have the opportunity of making a name for himself as an iconoclastic Canadian Chomsky. Go to it, man, make your name in yet another field of endeavour. Far from me to discourage such original thinking and suggest the whole thing is without any basis in reality, is a false premise, and represents the last gasp fabulations of a rhetorician unwilling to admit defeat...