House of Commons Hansard #26 of the 37th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was judiciary.

Topics

Judges ActGovernment Orders

6:10 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Brian Fitzpatrick Canadian Alliance Prince Albert, SK

Mr. Speaker, we have a solution to the problem. We had two Rhodes scholars and another very intelligent lawyer, Peter Lougheed, who saw the danger. All three of them saw it. One was NDP. One was a middle of the road Tory. I think the other one may have been on the right a bit. They all saw the danger and they insisted on including the notwithstanding clause.

The prime minister at the time and the current Prime Minister, were very much involved with that process and they consented to it. However, since the adoption of that act in 1982 we have not had a prime minister decide to exercise that power in the face of some really outrageous things.

One example was the Singh decision. This person landed on our shores. The Supreme Court of Canada decided that even though he was not a Canadian he was entitled to the full protection of our Canadian legal system: the charter or rights, due process and everything along the line. Then there was a series of appeals and so on, and in reaction to it the government said the only way to deal with it was to expand the immigration department and all our internal appeal procedures.

Anybody who had anything to do with immigration law smiled from ear to ear. This was a new engine of growth for that whole area and there has been a flock of people move into the area. That is why we have these problems today. They are being debated in the House and taxpayers are spending a disproportionate amount of money on the whole system when common sense would say that there is a better way of dealing with it.

The government has not decided to take that action because it would mean exercising something called the notwithstanding clause which enshrined in our constitution the supremacy of parliament. The prime minister at the time would not have gone ahead with the constitution if he had not understood that. He was a very intelligent man. He understood the significance of what that notwithstanding clause meant.

I am really amazed at how governments since that period of time have failed to exercise that power. It is very frightening. I keep going back to my analogy of the hockey referee. I cannot see the owners ever turning all that power over to referees, not just to enforce the rules and call them fairly and so on, but to say that if they do not like the rules halfway through the third period they can be rewritten whichever way they want.

That is basically what the government has been doing with our system. It has given the nine men and women on the Supreme Court of Canada a blank cheque in this whole area. It has basically told them they have the ultimate authority, that although people elected them to be the Government of Canada they are wiser and smarter, and that the public really does not know what is best so they have the final decision.

Judges ActGovernment Orders

6:15 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Larry Spencer Canadian Alliance Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK

Mr. Speaker, a few moments ago the hon. colleague from Prince Albert talked about the possibility of it being unwise to select judges specifically on their need or greed of money. It would seem to me that those were pretty good comments. Selecting someone to be my judge who is so greedy or so needy that his love of money causes him to not take that position unless he makes over $200,000, in my mind brings him into question.

My hon. friend is a lawyer. He has had experience in a lot of court cases. There are two questions I would like to ask him. Could you give us some specific examples of how the courts have usurped the power of parliament? What is the proper way of selecting judges?

Judges ActGovernment Orders

6:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Just before I give the floor to the hon. member for Prince Albert, I would like to remind members that when asking questions to one another to direct them through the Chair, not directly to each other.

Judges ActGovernment Orders

6:15 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Brian Fitzpatrick Canadian Alliance Prince Albert, SK

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for that very challenging question. I could go through a lot of decisions but I guess the most recent one I can think of is a murder that occurred in Washington state.

The victims were in Washington state. The crime was committed there. Canada really did not have any interest in this crime other than we do not like to see innocent people murdered. However the people who were murdered were not Canadian citizens, they were American citizens. Through good fortune, the people who committed the crime ended up in Canadian territory. With the Singh decision and so on, they had full rights to use our system or to basically exhaust it. They made it to the Supreme Court of Canada and the supreme court did something very astonishing.

As a lawyer, I respect the American process. It believes in reasonable doubt. One is innocent until proven guilty. One is entitled to a defence counsel. Long before that was ever an entitlement in Canada, the public purse provided one with defence counsel. The supreme court of the United States has a long history of appointing defence counsel to represent people who have limited means and so on and some major decisions have worked through the system. One is entitled to a trial before one's peers, a jury and so on. It is a system much criticized in the rest of the world as favouring the accused too much.

The Supreme Court of Canada decides that American judgment as to what it should do with criminals in America is not good enough, that Canadians know better, especially the Supreme Court of Canada, and that Americans have no right to decide the penalties if they are not in line with our penalty system.

Capital punishment is totally alien to our value system. The American supreme court never asked the people of Washington state or the other 280 million people in the United States whether they thought capital punishment was warranted in this situation. It knew better and decided to impose its decision on the Americans as if they were in some banana republic or in some dictatorship in Africa or in the Middle East or something like that. The Supreme Court of Canada has been doing that internally.

There have been many other cases. There was a case seven or eight years ago. It was actually from my province. A person, whose name I forget, killed 14 or 15 children in California and ended up on our soil. It was a decision very much like this. He worked his way through the system. Fortunately, the Supreme Court of Canada still had some people who had some good judgement. A four to three decision ruled that this guy should go back to California. The plane was running at the airport in Prince Albert. American authorities were waiting at the Prince Albert institution. They rushed him out of there, put him on the plane and flew him out of the country before some immigration lawyer could start another application.

My understanding is that this fellow is still working his way through the system in the United States. The Americans are not finished with him. However, I think in many ways the government would have preferred that this individual stay in Canada where we are much more compassionate and caring in regard to these sorts of individuals than a lot of other people.

They know better and we have a Supreme Court of Canada that definitely knows a lot better than the average Joe in Canada. Those people have a lot more wisdom. They have been on the 28th storey in Toronto, looking out the window through a lot of smog for a lot of time and that gives them a lot clearer picture of the landscape of the country and what should be done.

There are a lot of examples of this sort of thing. To me it gets right to the whole question of the justice system in the country. It is defective.

Judges ActGovernment Orders

6:20 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Rob Anders Canadian Alliance Calgary West, AB

Mr. Speaker, for the folks back home, what is happening today? Basically we have a Liberal government that has just come off an election. It did not really have much of a mandate to go to the people with, so it is putting forward a Judges Act which was put forward in the last parliament, and it wants to give a significant raise to judges.

The important thing for people back home to keep in mind, and I will discuss many of the details of the bill, is that rather than bringing forward legislation on the Young Offenders Act in order to strike at serious repeat offenders who are causing all sorts of problems with the legal system, the Liberals want to deal with judges' compensation. The Liberals did not want to talk about the Young Offenders Act. They did not want to deal with serious repeat offenders.

It goes on. The Liberals did not want to deal with consecutive sentencing, where somebody who commits a crime only serves one murder sentence and gets a multiple discount for multiple murders. They did not want to deal with consecutive sentencing so that the individual could serve one sentence after another sentence, which is, by the way, something that the Liberal member for Mississauga East brought up in the House and tried desperately to get her government to adopt. Despite that fact, they tried to kill her bill in committee. Despite that, no, they do not want to talk about consecutive sentencing. The Liberals do not want to deal with issues that have been brought forward by their own members like the member for Mississauga East, a good loyal Liberal who has probably been there for a decade.

The government does not want to listen to that. It does not want to listen to what her constituents have to say on this. Instead it is raising judges' salaries.

I will go on. These Liberals do not want to deal with pedophiles. They say it is okay for people to possess kiddie porn, that the judge's decision on it is all right. They do not want to deal with pedophiles, pedophile legislation and possession of child pornography. No, the top priority for the Liberals when they come back after going out on the stump and getting elected is raising judges' salaries.

Those are Liberal priorities for you. This goes on. They do not want to bring up the idea of a violent sex offender registry. We have people in Canada who have committed multiple rapes, yet does the government come up with an effective strategy to deal with multiple rapists? No. The government paroles them and put them back on the streets.

Instead of dealing with these real and serious issues, what does the government come to us with after an election? It wants to raise judges' salaries.

Let us talk about raising judges' salaries since we are not going to talk about all those other important things that a Liberal justice minister should be bringing forward. We are not going to talk about the things people really want. We are going to talk about what the bureaucrats want. We are going to let them drive the agenda. That is the Liberal way.

Let us talk about this whole idea of how judges are chosen. I take issue with the Prime Minister. I recognize that the Prime Minister was elected yet again by the people in his riding. I would not have voted for him, but at least a plurality of the people in the Prime Minister's riding decided to vote for him. At least he has some sort of mandate. Not only was he elected by some number of people in his own riding, but as well he actually had to get enough delegates at the convention for the Liberal Party. Back in 1990 he was in my home town of Calgary, much to my chagrin. Nonetheless that was where he was elected. He had probably a few thousand people who said they wanted to give this guy the nod.

At least the Prime Minister has been chosen by the delegates within his own party and by the people within his own constituency. It is not as democratic as I might like. I think it would have been better if all Liberal Party members across the country would have voted rather than just the palace guard.

Judges ActGovernment Orders

6:25 p.m.

An hon. member

Oh, oh.

Judges ActGovernment Orders

6:25 p.m.

Canadian Alliance

Rob Anders Canadian Alliance Calgary West, AB

I hear some squawking on the other side. I know I am hitting home when that happens. I know they are sensitive to this issue.

Despite all these problems with their process, nonetheless the Prime Minister has been democratically elected. If we can choose the Prime Minister democratically in the country, who then goes on to appoint people to the supreme court and to thousands of other positions, many of which are patronage positions including the other place which I like to rant about every now and again, and if he seems to accept the will of the people for his nomination and for his choosing, then by what rational argument do members across the way or anyone in this place say that judges, or any other position for that matter, cannot be democratically elected?

If we choose the man who is supposed to be the head of the government in this place, the Prime Minister, and he is democratically elected as one of the most important decision makers supposedly around, then why would we not choose judges or senators or many other people by democratic election? This makes absolutely perfect sense to me. Yet we have people across the way who will argue one side and then the other side, equivocate and try to muddle this issue by saying it is complex.

Fundamentally it comes down to from where people believe the power is derived. I happen to believe, and I will state it squarely today, that the power is derived from the people. I think they generally make pretty good decisions when they are given the chance.

I have asked many people today about the appointment process, what they think would be a better process than the one we have now. I happen to think that vetting them before a committee at least would be better than what we have. In my ideal scenario I would probably want to have them democratically elected.

I know right now with the process as it stands that people are given justice positions because of political favours they have done for a government. There are people in this place that can try to sideline that by saying that is not the case and by asking how dare I raise questions about these things.

Every one of the people in here, especially the practising lawyers in this place, know all too well that there are people who are given justice positions because of their political favouritism, of their stripe, of their donations or some mishap like that. Frankly there is a better way to go about it and I think the wisdom of the people is a good way to go.

I know that one of my NDP colleagues in this place asked why we would want to have these people determined by committee because the Liberals would just use that as a rubber stamp anyhow; they go ahead and do whatever they want in committee so why would we want a committee to vet it.

I realize that the Liberals abuse the committee process in this place better than pretty much anybody could. They are experts at abusing the committee process, even for their own members like the member for Mississauga East where they severely abused the committee process to try to kill her bill.

I recognize that if these appointments had to go before committee at least they could be some form of questioning. Hopefully we could shed the light of day on some of these appointments. If we cannot actually change what the Liberals decide they want to shove down peoples' throats, we could point out to the public that a person has made large contributions to the Liberal Party or has some sort of connection to someone in government.

It is an issue that deserves a lot more time than what you are giving me, Mr. Speaker. Nonetheless, there are ways we can improve the process by vetting through committee and possibly electing them.

Judges ActGovernment Orders

6:25 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

It being 6.30 p.m., the House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow, pursuant to Standing Order 24.

(The House adjourned at 6.30 p.m.)