Activist judges are at their most powerful when justice departments are apathetic and court-shy.

Conservatives know this — especially in Ontario, where the premier has voiced personal disdain for a bench run amok. So it’s perplexing that the same government appears to be dozing off while the ideas of a rogue judge have catapulted up to the Supreme Court.

In 2022, presiding over the divorce case of Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, Justice Renu Mandhane invented a new type of lawsuit for Ontario that would permit ex-partners to sue each other for “family violence.” In that case, the father had been psychologically and physically abusive for 16 years to his wife, who now wanted out — with the ordinary spousal supports, as well as extraordinary damages for the abuse she’d endured during her marriage.