Danielle Smith says court 'skewed' to Liberal donors, but UCP picks have political ties just as often

Premier Danielle Smith wielded a striking figure earlier this month to make her case for giving her province more say in how the federal government picks upper court judges for Alberta.

“Especially since 80 per cent of the judges or so have been demonstrated to have Liberal party donations, I don’t know why anyone would think that the process we have right now is free of politics,” she told reporters.

Eighty per cent? Four in five?

If that were true, it would paint a picture of a judicial appointment system rife with partisanship, at levels previously unseen in other analyses of judges’ donation records, either academic or journalistic.

It is not true. The single media source Smith got that fact from has since corrected it.