Upcoming Supreme Court of Canada retirements make this a very important federal election

The next prime minister of Canada could be in a position to appoint four Supreme Court of Canada justices.

The nine-member court's mandatory retirement age is 75, and four will reach this milestone by the end of 2015. Morris J. Fish will be the first to turn 75 on November 16, 2013.

Ian Binnie and Louis LeBel will be 75 in 2014, and Marshall Rothstein reaches that age on December 25, 2015.

For years, conservatives have wanted to rein in the Supreme Court of Canada, which has issued numerous decisions over the years that have enraged right wingers.

Those rulings include striking down Canada's abortion law, "reading in" sexual orientation to the list of equality rights guaranteed under Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and requiring that the Crown provide full disclosure to the defence in criminal cases.

In 2000, University of Calgary professors Ted Morton (later Alberta's finance minister) and Rainer Knopff wrote a book called The Charter Revolution & The Court Party, which alleged that "university-based intellectuals" had embarked on an "astoundingly successful strategy" to promote an activist, rights-based agenda through the courts.

In their book, they took special aim at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, and the LGBT advocacy group Egale Canada for the role they played in advancing legal rights for minorities and women.

"Gay advocates (and postmodernists generally) view law as an important formative pedagogical force," Morton and Knopff wrote. "Just as the traditional family has been constructed by the law, so changing the law can deconstruct it."

Morton and Knopff, along with future prime minister Stephen Harper, were among six Albertans who signed a famous "firewall letter" in 2001 to then-premier Ralph Klein. The letter called on Alberta to withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan, create a provincial police force, and assert full provincial control over health care.

Meanwhile in late 2006, the national vice president of REAL Women of Canada, a right-wing women's group, told the Georgia Straight that her organization was considering joining other groups in a constitutional challenge to curtail the powers of the federal government.

At the time, Gwendolyn Landolt declined to identify which organizations were working together on this issue.

She specifically objected to the federal government funding women's shelters, daycare, and cultural activities, which she claimed were exclusively provincial domains under the British North America Act.

If such a challenge is ever filed, it will take years to wind its way through the courts.

It's likely that whoever is appointed to serve on the Supreme Court of Canada in the next four years would render a verdict in a case like that.

If Harper were to win a majority government on May 2 and later stack the court with judges who share the views of right wingers such as Morton, Knopff, and Landolt, this could have profound ramifications on the future of Canada.

Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.