An Act to amend the Judges Act

This bill was last introduced in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session, which ended in September 2008.

Sponsor

Rob Nicholson  Conservative

Status

This bill has received Royal Assent and is now law.

Summary

This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament often publishes better independent summaries.

This enactment increases the number of judicial salaries that may be paid under paragraph 24(3)(b) of the Judges Act from thirty to fifty.

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Judges ActGovernment Orders

January 28th, 2008 / 1:05 p.m.
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NDP

Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Winnipeg makes the point that it may actually slow the process down. Maybe a different process would have been more useful. I think there is some merit to that.

However, beyond that there is nothing in the bill that would expand access by our first nations to our courts.

Getting back to the appointment process, maybe we should concentrate on getting more lawyers who come out of first nations and aboriginal communities onto the bench. In that regard, a little over two years ago an aboriginal lawyers' group that appeared before committee were quite proud of the fact that for the first time 100 lawyers had come out of first nations and Métis communities. That was a very negative comment with regard to recruitment from our law schools. In Ontario alone we have something like 30,000 lawyers and of those 30,000 only about 30 or 40 of them have come out of first nations.

Another thing concerns me about the bill. Two first nations communities in Yukon have approached me about expanding their methodology of dispensing justice. This is something we have not pursued. The prior Liberal government did not do it and the present Conservative government seems to be paying no attention to it whatsoever.

Judges ActGovernment Orders

January 28th, 2008 / 1:05 p.m.
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Liberal

Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member could elaborate more on his comments about the independence of the judiciary. As he outlined, the Prime Minister made some embarrassing comments about that when he was in opposition but when his party became government it actually did things to change the ridiculous roll back of judges' wages. The Conservatives also changed the appointment process, stacking it with government appointees even though they did not have to follow the appointments. They changed the qualification requirements so they could pick anyone out of the group.

I wonder if the member could comment on that total attack on judicial independence which was a hallmark of the justice system in Canada until the Conservatives took power.

I wonder if my colleague could also comment on whether the appointment of 14 more judges to deal with the backlog is an indictment of the government's failure to deal with crime. The Conservatives have identified crime as one of their high priorities. However, had they been dealing with crime in ways that we have both promoted, such as dealing with the cause, recidivism, et cetera, then less judges would be needed, not more. Is this not an indictment of the government's failure to deal properly with crime and to reduce crime in the country?

Judges ActGovernment Orders

January 28th, 2008 / 1:05 p.m.
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NDP

Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON

Mr. Speaker, quickly on the points about the government not dealing with crime with a holistic viewpoint and with regard to its judicial appointments, one of the things that is of concern to a lot of trial lawyers in the country, in particular those on the prosecution side, is that we are going to get hit with another Askov type of decision by a superior court.

The backlog in the criminal area is increasing dramatically. A number of cases have been dismissed. The fear is that at some point there is going to be an overwhelming decision by one of our superior courts or appeal courts that is going to strike down a large number of criminal cases. It is not going to be an issue of dealing with them at all; they are just going to be out of the court system. When it happened in Ontario back in the early 1990s, it included a number of serious criminal cases that were dismissed at that point because they had not been dealt with in a proper fashion.

To deal with the issue of the government's attitude toward our judiciary and in particular its trying to interfere with the independence of the judiciary, probably the classic example of this is the former justice minister, not the present one, who sat with us on our review of judicial appointments. The position that he consistently took was that of wanting to create a less partisan appointment process, which was the case under the Liberals in a number of cases, one where the person being appointed is the absolute best choice in the country or in that region, without caring about his or her political affiliation one way or the other, not as a positive or a negative. It would be that we simply went on merit and took the very best candidate.

I remember how hard he pushed for that when he was the justice critic for the Conservatives. Now that they are in power we see what they are in fact doing, which again is to very much move away from the complete independence of the judiciary, as our Constitution requires, and toward a very clear, focused attempt to ideologically affect the appointment process, which would then ideologically affect the judiciary at all levels all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Judges ActGovernment Orders

January 28th, 2008 / 1:10 p.m.
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Liberal

Larry Bagnell Liberal Yukon, YT

Mr. Speaker, I would like to continue with the theme that the problem is not the number of judges, although I think everyone agrees with regard to the backlog and the specific claims process, which we are all supporting. The problem is in the way judges are appointed. If the way judges are appointed is such a disaster, which it has been as handled by the government, of course if we have more judges the problem is just going to increase.

When the Conservatives came to power they went around the process of the judges' salaries and put the iron fist on that. Once again, they inhibited the independence of the process and the judiciary by interfering in that process. Then they rejigged the whole judicial appointment process in ways that were roundly criticized by most judicial system experts across the country. It was only a recommendation. They would stack the appointment of judges in favour of the government.

That is not a secret agenda. This was quite open because the Prime Minister himself made the point that they needed the judges not to be independent, but to implement government policy, to make their interpretation of the law so that it would affect government policy rather than be an independent, fair, just interpretation of whatever laws there are. Of course, then government can change the laws if it does not like how they are interpreted.

I of course want to support the point on specific claims. This is a very important procedure that will definitely support the judges who will be required to catch up on the horrific backlog of claims for aboriginal people in this country and get some of those longstanding claims finally dealt with.

The final point I want to make is on the failure of the government to deal with crime. Although crime is being reduced in Canada, the government chose this as a high priority, and if it had been successful during its mandate there would have been a reduction in crime and we would need fewer judges, not more.

What is the reason for this? There was a wonderful show on CBC's The Current, last Thursday I believe, in which Anna Maria Tremonti talked about the failures in the federal jails in Canada. If we are going to reduce crime and a majority of crime is repeat crime, how do we deal with that? We have debated this numerous times in the justice committee. We have heard the experts' solutions. We have heard police officers' solutions.

Those solutions deal with making sure those crimes do not occur in the first place. They deal with removing the root causes of crime. They deal with removing overcrowding and poverty. They deal with the lack of ability to gain meaningful employment, whatever the reason might be. They deal with removing the much lower achievement of aboriginal people, on average, and with getting their school system up to the same level of achievement and therefore the same opportunities for gainful employment.

As the CBC analyzed with great care last week, this also deals with the treatment of prisoners. There are the criminals, in jail, where we have access to them, and they are going to reoffend unless they are treated properly. The program showed repeated examples of insufficient treatment, educational opportunities and anger management. Quite often the inmates themselves were asking for these services, these things that would help them return to society.

At committee, the experts told us that longer jail terms in many cases actually increase crime because jail is like a university of crime and inmates who are away longer from a quickly evolving society do not then have the ability to easily integrate. However, if they have the skills, they come out to a whole different world. It just exacerbates the situation if they are not getting training in the institution.

There has been one great leap forward in training and rehabilitation. It relates to alternative sentencing and different types of treatment of criminals outside of simple incarceration. A few weeks ago at an Ottawa city committee that deals with this, the chief of police gave marvellous examples of how that system had much greater rehabilitation effects.

We have failed for probably a thousand years to rehabilitate and to succeed in stopping recidivism, but at least some of these group conferencing and other types of non-incarceration sentences are actually having an effect. That effect is 60% to 70% in stopping a person from repeating a crime, whereas traditional incarceration has an effect of roughly only 40%.

We have finally come upon a new system that is having some effect on certain levels of criminals, but the government tried to pass a bill that would eliminate this for the vast majority of crimes. Fortunately, that bill did not pass. It was stopped.

Another example is that of the aboriginal court justice workers. The program was renewed at the eleventh hour. Thank goodness the present justice minister is totally supportive of that program, thinks it is a good idea and ultimately did renew it, but the government pushed that program right to the brink. Instead of rehabilitating offenders in this way that has been so successful, those workers had to spend their time fighting the fact that their program was expiring and there would no longer be any funding. At the last moment, funding was put into the program. I hope this system is actually put in on a permanent basis so these workers do not have to keep applying for funds.

Our position on this is that of course we want the justice system to work effectively. Justice delayed can be justice denied, so we want sufficient justices in the system to deal with cases. We certainly want judges for the specific claims, but we would certainly like the government to take far more action to reduce crime in the ways suggested by members of all the opposition parties and all the experts who came before committee. That would actually reduce crime so we would not need to keep increasing the number of judges and have an act like this.

Judges ActGovernment Orders

January 28th, 2008 / 1:15 p.m.
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NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Bill Blaikie

Is the House ready for the question?

Judges ActGovernment Orders

January 28th, 2008 / 1:15 p.m.
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Some hon. members

Question.

Judges ActGovernment Orders

January 28th, 2008 / 1:15 p.m.
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NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Bill Blaikie

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

Judges ActGovernment Orders

January 28th, 2008 / 1:15 p.m.
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Some hon. members

Agreed.

Judges ActGovernment Orders

January 28th, 2008 / 1:15 p.m.
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NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Bill Blaikie

Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to a committee)