IF PRIME MINISTER STEPHEN HARPER has been keeping up with the news during his Northern exploits, he may be thinking seriously of exerting his influence to have Justice Bruce Pugsley appointed as a judge of the Ontario Superior Court or the Federal Court of Canada.

It's not often that an Ontario Court judge's written decision makes great waves throughout the law establishment of a province, but Justice Pugsley has probably brought about some significant family law reforms with his ruling and 18-page decision last year on a Dufferin case that to some might have appeared minor at first glance.

The simple facts noted by the judge in the case were that a Shelburne couple had a troubled marriage in which the husband, thinking his wife was unfaithful, installed a device on the family computer to secretly track his wife's e-mail and copy one in which she had jokingly told a female friend she sometimes wished she had a gun.

At one point, the wife had punched the husband in the head at a dance. When the husband a month later went to police to report the punch and produce the e-mail, the wife was incarcerated overnight. Although released on bail the following morning, she was made subject to a court order not to attend at her matrimonial home.

In the light of Justice Pugsley's findings, we might have suspected most judges would have granted a conditional discharge with a period of probation. But he considered the circumstances more profoundly, and ruled that the husband's actions and delayed complaint were an abuse of the courts.

The fact that he delivered an 18-page judgment on a troubling issue spoke volumes about the quality of this judge.

For some reason, most recent appointments to the Ontario Superior Court have been of lawyers, not lower-court judges.

But there is no doubt in our mind that we have one here who has demonstrated the kind of quality needed for an appointment to a higher court.