Bill S-207

An Act to change the name of the electoral district of Châteauguay—Lacolle

This enactment changes the name of the electoral district of Châteauguay—Lacolle to “Châteauguay—Les Jardins-de-Napierville”.

The House resumed from October 21 consideration of the motion that Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Judges Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Judges Act

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my sincerest pleasure to be able to speak to Bill C-9, an act to amend the Judges Act.

As someone who has dedicated my life before politics to upholding Canada's justice system and representing those who have been victimized, I will begin these remarks by expressing the necessity for our justice system to be transparent.

This bill seeks to improve on the current judicial complaints process. More than six years ago, in 2016, the Liberal government began the consultations on reforming the complaints process for judges. I question the government's priorities at this time, once again, that these reforms are only now coming to the floor after being introduced some six years ago.

I am glad to see that this legislation has finally come forward. I believe that, with proper amendments at committee, it will make the complaints process inherent in this bill much stronger.

The credibility of Canadian democracy and its institutions have been shaken over the last few years. This is especially so since the onset of COVID and profound encroachment that the government has had on the lives of its citizens at almost every turn.

I have been deeply concerned about the declining state of our institutions and of our democracy. I am concerned about the erosion of Canadian institutions, and I am concerned that this happened over the course of the Liberal administration. We have seen Canadians lose confidence and trust in their government, in health care authorities, in law enforcement and in the media.

Canada's justice system has also been tested greatly. During this time, its independence, its impartiality, its access and its fairness have all been brought into question. I know our system is not perfect. There are many issues that need to be addressed. We must ensure that our legal system maintains the trust of Canadians, and that is part of my job as a legislator.

We are fortunate that, despite the Liberal government's many blunders, there is still some confidence in our system. Sadly, we see that on one hand, the government is attempting to improve the rigour of the system by strengthening the judicial complaints process. On the other hand, it is undermining victims of crime by removing things like mandatory minimum sentences for the most violent offences.

It is imperative that we stand on guard and ensure that the pillars of our democracy are upheld. It is imperative that we always look for ways to fix the weaknesses, to find the loopholes and to strengthen the mechanisms that build trust, accountability and transparency in our justice system.

There are weaknesses in our justice system and some of them have been exacerbated by the Liberal government. This long overdue bill is a step in the right direction. This bill highlights the need to fix the weaknesses in our justice system and to also strengthen the checks and balances around how central players of our justice system, like judges, are held to account when an allegation of misconduct arises.

What would this bill do? As I mentioned, Bill C-9 proposes changes to the Judges Act to strengthen the judicial complaints process, which was first established 50 years ago. The Judges Act regulates judges in a number of ways. It empowers the Canadian Judicial Council, the CJC, to investigate public complaints. Judges can also be investigated on a referral from an Attorney General of Canada or a provincial attorney general with respect to any conduct of federally appointed judges.

The Canadian Judicial Council has 41 members, including all chief justices and associate chief justices. Under the new process proposed in this bill, there are four reasons that judges may be removed. These include infirmity, misconduct, failure in the due execution of judicial office or the judge is in a position that a reasonable and fair-minded individual, an informed observer, would consider to be incompatible with the due execution of judicial office.

The bill specifically states that a federally appointed judge may be removed from office if:

the judge’s continuation in office would undermine public confidence in the impartiality, integrity or independence of the judge or of their office to such an extent that it would render the judge incapable of executing the functions of judicial office:

I would now like to turn to the topic of fixing the system.

The Canadian Judicial Council has for years publicly lamented the fact that the current system is often “enormously time-consuming, expensive and taxing on our federal courts.” It has called for legislative reforms that are necessary to “maintaining public confidence in the administration of justice”, which is the crux of the matter. For that, there must be a deep trust and confidence not only in the system, but in the administrators of the system, the judges who are counted on to dispense fair and impartial decisions based on evidence and in accordance with law, and who would administrate and execute those duties with the utmost confidence in the system.

The only way that public confidence is maintained is by ensuring there is a robust process by which judges are held to account. If people lose confidence in the integrity of the judiciary, then the whole system unravels.

I can tell members that, as a trial lawyer and someone who has owned my own practice, I had confidence appearing before judges. I knew they were qualified, would make sound decisions and were committed to the rule of law. However, over the past two years I have been approached by many individuals who are concerned about our system. They have asked me things like how a judge who ran for the Liberal Party could sit and preside over a bail hearing of somebody in the convoy who was charged under the Emergencies Act. These questions bring our administration of justice into disrepute and highlight the need to ensure that judges are not in a conflict.

Our system is not perfect, but it aspires to apply the scales of justice equally to all of us. It is logical to insist that judges be held to a higher standard than the average person precisely because of the office they hold.

In closing, I will highlight the fact that I am commending the government on getting this legislation to the floor. I believe that if this legislation is put before committee we could really hammer out some of the sections that need to be strengthened.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, we have the Canadian Judicial Council, and I believe they had a semi-annual meeting take place in Alberta. There was a concern as to why the legislation was not passing through. The government has a fairly robust legislative agenda. We have attempted to get Bill C-9 through, ultimately having to go to time allocation to get it through second reading. It still needs to go through the committee stage, not to mention the report and third reading stages.

Could the member provide her thoughts on the need for the passage of the legislation? Does she believe that the legislation should pass this year, or would the Conservative Party rather see it pass in 2023?

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I take my job as a legislator very seriously. It is imperative that the people who elect us know that we are not just pushing bills through, but that we are passing the best bills.

For that to happen, it means that, when we have time allocation, we use that time to make sure we improve on the bill and we put the best bill forward. That is what I endeavour to do.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.

I want to say that we support this bill. I must also note that the process needs to take less time.

Look at what happened in Val‑d'Or with Judge Girouard. That took place not far from where I live, so I am very familiar with the story. He had been appointed to the Superior Court of Quebec, and he was able to keep receiving his salary the whole time the case was before the courts. It is unthinkable that a judge could even do such a thing, that is, possibly sell cocaine.

We must prevent these situations from ever happening again and put an end to the process, which is too long and does not allow people to be judged accordingly.

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is very true that, when a judge is charged with improprieties, they should not be rewarded by having their salary or their pensions continue, especially such an egregious impropriety as alluded to by the hon. member.

It is my position that a part of this bill has to be the strengthening of the clauses that would take away this privilege from judges and also take away the fact that they could appeal and use taxpayer dollars to frustrate the system when they have been charged with an offence.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think I heard from the member that the Conservatives are interested in moving this forward and sending this to committee.

Could the member tell us if Conservatives are committed to not slowing down and frustrating this process and to sending the bill to committee?

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I take deep exception to the comments of anybody who would think that I or my colleagues would slow down the process. I take my job very seriously as a legislator.

As I said before, this is something that is very important to me. I believe the bill is very important to the judicial system. I have been an officer of the court as a lawyer. I think it is very important that we maintain integrity in the system. Therefore, a rigorous application of this bill is necessary, and we would continue to do that to put the best bill forward.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about maintaining public confidence in our system.

Perhaps the member could further elaborate about public confidence in our justice system, after seven years of Liberal policies that have eroded the public's trust.

[Leslyn Lewis, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for that very pertinent question.

There is a problem with the public trust. As I said, as a lawyer I appeared before judges and I always had the confidence of knowing that these judges were impartial. However, with some of the things that we have seen over the last few years, even with how the Emergencies Act was dispensed, there is a lot of concern among Canadian citizens about the erosion of institutions in our system. When we have violent offenders being released on the streets and frustrating the parole system, it really brings our administration of justice into disrepute.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Haldimand—Norfolk raised some very good points and spoke about why it is very important to address the judicial system and build integrity in the system, and my colleague from Niagara Falls raised the issue of public confidence in our justice system, so I want to pick up on those points and talk about the fact that violent crime is up on our streets, yet the government and its coalition partners have certainly been shown to be soft on crime.

I want to refer, as we talk about debate on this issue, to three articles that were in The Hamilton Spectator, the daily paper in my community, just this week alone. Let me read the headlines, because I think they speak to the fact that we really have a crime wave that is going on in our streets, and if we are going to talk about the judicial system, what is not in the bill and what we are not talking about is the increase in violent crime and the increase in weapons and those things that were watered down in Bill C-5 with the watered-down mandatory minimums. We need to really address that, because that is certainly what people in my community are asking about.

This was just on Wednesday: “Two teens charged and one suspect at large after weekend shooting near Hess Village”, which is a popular area for bars in the Hamilton area. This article refers to the fact that there were “32 shootings reported in Hamilton this year”, and three people killed. This is just one example.

Two days prior, on Monday of this week, there was a “Loaded firearm seized...at Hamilton Mountain restaurant”. This is concerning to people in my community. Police arrested some suspects in this crime, but the fact that there were loaded firearms at restaurants in suburban communities and the fact that people are afraid to go out as a result of these things are a concern. That is something that is not really being addressed in changes to the judicial system under the current government.

There is another one, from Sunday, again this same week, so there are three articles this week: “Police are investigating gunshots following a ‘disturbance’ on Hamilton’s west Mountain...Officers say [this was] in a parking lot of [a] housing complex”. Here we have people who are living in these communities, and they are experiencing all these increases in gun crime and violent crime. That is something that is not being addressed in this bill and is not being addressed by the government.

I know of another example, though I do not have the article or the headline on it, in my own riding in the town of Binbrook, which is really a small community of about 5,000 people. Recently in Binbrook there have been a number of car thefts and a number of home invasions. Members can imagine someone in a bedroom community who is fearful of home invasions in their community. This is a little further from the city, so police response is slow. These are things that are of real concern to real people in our communities, but they are not being addressed in changes to the justice system under the current government.

The revolving door of crime we are seeing is something that really needs to be more strongly addressed. I could throw out a number of different stats from the articles I talked about. There are still 348 people who are wanted on outstanding charges, including drugs and weapons charges. Many are repeat offenders, and that is not being addressed in the legislation.

As well, our system is not perfect, and that is the point that has been made by my colleague from Haldimand—Norfolk, but we do expect a higher standard of judges, and we expect a response to these activities that are going on in our communities that make people fearful to walk the streets. We know that is going on. We know there is this increase in violent crime. How are we addressing the root causes of that and focusing in on that?

Let me just conclude by echoing the comments made by my colleague. It is not perfect. There are things in the bill that we support. There are some criticisms she has suggested, and obviously they will be studied at committee, but my larger question is this: How are we helping people in our communities who are concerned about the increase of crime and not hearing any answers?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, the principle of this bill is to ensure and continue to support the need for independence in our judicial system. It would enable the process of looking at our judges and their performance to continue to be independent of politics.

We are a country that is based on the rule of law. There is a great expectation from stakeholders that this legislation will, in fact, pass through the system before the end of the year. Because of time allocation, we are finally going to be able to get it out of second reading so that it goes to committee.

I posed this question to the previous speaker today: What is the Conservative Party's position? I am asking this so that the people in the back room will be able to inform whoever might be speaking whether the Conservative Party's intention is to ultimately see this bill pass in 2022, or if it would rather see it pass in 2023.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as was pointed out in the question, there is time allocation on the bill, so we will be proceeding with it today, obviously, and we will get it to committee.

Aside from the bill, the larger question that the Conservative Party is asking is this: What are we doing about violent crime in our cities? What are we doing about the fact that there is an opioid crisis?

There are many issues that are not being dealt with, which are the concern of everyday Canadians, like the people I referred to in my communities and like the instances that were referred to in the articles I presented. That is really our question. When are we going to get serious about crime in this country?

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his speech, and he brought up a really great point that I would love to learn more about.

We just had a municipal election in my riding, and the number one concern was the rise of crime and the statistics that the same small number of people were responsible for the majority of crime, which has to do with bail reform. It is this “rinse and repeat” of people who are committing crimes and then re-released. They are committing the majority of crimes, but they are let out on bail. How important is bail reform versus Bill C-9?

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would point out that Peterborough—Kawartha is a beautiful area of Ontario and our country, and I would encourage you and all members of the House to visit Peterborough—Kawartha sometime soon.

It is a good question with regard to bail reform, which is what I referred to with some of the instances I pointed out. There is this revolving door, and at least according to one article, two-thirds of the charges were with regard to repeat offenders. There is that revolving door, and that is really what we think should be addressed: bail reform and some of the other aspects that are contributing to the rising crime and the rising violent crime, in addition to what is being proposed here today.