Bill C-31 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Judges Act

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.

Judges Act

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Yukon is absolutely correct. Committees as we well know in the House are masters of their own destiny. Regardless of what some of the members opposite said about filibustering in the House, that is not the case. We are trying to give examples of our worries about the bill. There are legitimate examples to substantiate our worries of how the government in power today sometimes goes beyond what we would expect a government in a democratic society would do and in terms of the traditions of our judiciary as they have been in the past.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, a number of members opposite have suggested that they would like to move quickly on the bill. They could have certainly helped by answering the question that we asked through the development of the bill. If we are going to appoint these 20 new judges, what is the distribution plan regionally? There are many regional requirements by the provinces and territories, in particular six of them. We asked a long time ago what the plan was for distributing these judges.

I do not know if the member has heard of a plan or not, but perhaps the members opposite could provide us with a plan and it would not slow the bill's progress.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, one of the difficulties around this place is having the time to get to every committee. I was not on the justice committee, although I paid attention to what happened during the debate.

As I understand it at the moment there is a grave need for additional superior court judges in Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Nunavut. They are experiencing growing backlogs. Nunavut faces severe challenges in providing access to justice for its aboriginal communities.

In fairness and to the credit of the government on this one, by moving ahead with the additional judges, it does give the opportunity to be heard in a fair and impartial court.

We all know in this place that if one does not have access to justice, in effect it is justice denied. It is important to have the human resources to have timely trials and timely decision making in order to have fairness under the law.

The accused is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but once a charge is laid, it certainly is a black mark against the individual. It is important to have the human resources, the financing of the courts to get rid of the backlogs so that the system can work in a timely fashion to ensure that justice is not just perceived to be done, but is actually done.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-31, which aims to increase the number of judges in the provincial and territorial superior trial courts by 20.

Everyone in this House can agree that we do not have enough judges and that this addition would allow the provincial and territorial superior trial courts to serve Canadians better. Indeed, the waiting periods for trials are often so long that one might be inclined to wonder if our justice system is working properly and if it meets the standards of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

We support these efforts to ensure that more judges are appointed in order to clear up the backlog that is accumulating in superior courts. I would like to point out that it was this Conservative government that interfered with the judicial advisory committee to ensure that the representatives chosen by the Minister of Justice would hold the majority of votes for each provincial judicial advisory committee.

We are all familiar with how these advisory committees operate in the provinces. Ideally, we hope that all judicial appointments are carried out in an non-partisan manner. Unfortunately, when the Conservative government insists—and uses its back-door methods to require—that all members of these committees be its chosen representatives, we must question its good faith.

It is also this same Conservative government that went to great lengths to fill the Canadian judicial system with its cronies. This was mentioned earlier, but I was unfortunately not in the House at the time, and I want to make sure that everyone knows about it. I am referring specifically to the Prime Minister's former campaign manager for New Brunswick, the former president of the Conservative Party of Quebec and the former Conservative Party fundraising manager in Alberta. The Honourable Beverly McLachlin, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, even criticized this government's failure to act on judicial matters.

In recent weeks and months, we have alluded in this House to this government's lack of seriousness in appointing judges in Ontario recently. We are all aware of the importance of bilingualism in Canada's courts of justice, especially in Ontario, where the Conservative government decided to circumvent the rules. In many, if not all, cases, the minority Conservative government appointed judges without making sure they were bilingual. Obviously, I am talking about these judges' ability to understand and speak French. Certainly, the Conservative government never would have dreamed of appointing a judge who did not speak English. They did the opposite in this case, appointing judges who are very comfortable in English but cannot speak French.

I would like to take a little trip down memory lane. As hon. members know, I come from a beautiful town on the south shore of the Ottawa River in eastern Ontario. This town, which is called L'Orignal, is the administrative seat of the county or judicial district of Prescott-Russell.

I learned about the law growing up in this charming village where my father practised law. He was a crown prosecutor for the Government of Ontario for many years in this part of eastern Ontario, where the francophone community has always had a strong presence.

This region was one of the first in Ontario to provide bilingual legal services in court. The proceedings for an accused who was to appear in court could be conducted in French. My father was a francophone by birth and the Ontario government had appointed judges who were francophones and who, naturally, had a good command of English. I remember that, at the time, there was Judge Joffre Archambault and then Judge Louis Cécile. The courts could function equally well in French or English.

As a result of several recent appointments by the Conservative government, unfortunately, individuals who are accused or who must use the services of the court in various districts in Ontario will not necessarily be able to seek justice in their language, that is, in French. It is a sign of bad faith on the part of this minority government with respect to our judicial system.

I would remind you that the Conservative government is claiming to table this bill to help clear the backlog in the provincial and territorial courts and to appoint additional judges to independent tribunals that are being set up to deal with the first nations specific land claims.

This bill seeks to amend subsection 24(3)(b) of the Judges Act to authorize the appointment of 20 additional judges to superior courts in the provinces and territories. In particular, the superior courts in Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Nunavut have backlogs and are experiencing ever growing delays. I would like to mention parenthetically that in my riding, Hull—Aylmer, located in the judicial district of Hull, there is definitely a need and the court delays are long.

Nunavut in particular is having a great deal of difficulty in providing access to justice for its aboriginal communities. The provinces lack resources, particularly in relation to family law, because of population growth.

On January 24, 2008—not so long ago—there were 24 judicial vacancies that the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada has the responsibility to fill. British Columbia currently has the largest number of vacancies, 10 in all, in its court of appeal and its supreme court.

The first nations specific claims tribunal has presented specific claims that will meet with a refusal for negotiation, or for which the negotiations will fail. Judging by the caseload for the specific claims, the federal government estimates that the new tribunal will need the equivalent of six full-time judges to manage roughly 40 claims a year. These claims come from across the country, but most started in British Columbia and some of the most complex claims are from Ontario and Quebec.

Six new judges are to be appointed to the superior courts of those provinces, proportional to their respective share of the number of specific claims. New judicial resources are to be assigned in order to allow certain superior courts to free up their experienced judges and appoint them to the specific claims tribunal.

This tribunal could be composed of 18 judges, who will be appointed to the tribunal by the governor in council on the recommendation of the Minister of Justice. The chairperson of the tribunal, in consultation with the chief justices of the jurisdictions involved, will assign these judges, probably part time, to specific claims.

Although we support the efforts to appoint extra judges, I must tell the House—as some of my colleagues have already done—that we regret that the bill does not address in any way matters related to the independence of the judiciary. I deplore this destructive attitude of the Conservative minority government.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest. I wonder if the hon. member, who has talked about the amendment to the bill, knows, first, when the Judges Act was last amended to reflect Canadian needs.

Second, and more importantly, I listened to the other speakers, who always talked about two or three appointed people who likely were Conservatives, so I suspect they believe that every judge appointed should be a Liberal. There are those connotations. I really wonder, though, if they are saying that, do they really believe that the appointed judges are not qualified people?

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his question. It seems that he is trying to bring my alleged objection to judges from Conservative circles into the discussion. He is trying to make people believe that I would like judges to come from Liberal circles only. That is not at all how I operate.

On the contrary, it was as essential, as crucial, when we were in power as it is now that the minority Conservative government is in power to appoint the best candidates to the bench, whether they are appointed by the federal government or provincial governments, or whether they are appointed to an administrative role. In my opinion, neither a Liberal government nor a Conservative one should appoint a person to such an important, key position in our democracy without ensuring that the appointee is the most competent candidate with a sense of judgment good enough to do the job.

My colleague is wrong to suggest that I think all appointees should be Liberals. This is about appointing competent people. If my colleague were to be honest with himself and with me, he would admit that, in general, Liberal candidates are less inclined to the right or the extreme right, which leaves room for fairer rulings. However, this is not at all about thinking that appointees should all be one or the other.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Hull—Aylmer mentioned something important, which is access to justice. Access to justice is something very important for the constituents in our various ridings. Access to justice is certainly related to bilingualism. We ensure that the judges appointed will be able to provide services for Canadians in the language spoken by those Canadians.

The government constantly talks about bilingualism and regularly throws around related words, as though it were the defender and saviour of bilingualism, but that is absolutely not the case. The Conservatives' actions clearly show official language minority communities that the government thinks nothing of those who need services in the language of their choice.

Could my colleague tell us whether this attitude from the Conservative government undermines what we refer to as access to justice? Does being unable to appear before the court in the language of their choice undermine access to justice for official language minority communities, the francophones outside of Quebec, or the anglophones in Quebec?

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Madawaska—Restigouche for his very relevant question. My colleague is obviously from New Brunswick, where everyone is also very aware of what it means when a judge cannot allow an accused or someone in the judicial system to address the court in his or her preferred official language.

I spoke earlier about judges who were appointed in Ontario by this minority Conservative government, which failed to show good judgment by making sure that those judges were bilingual—perhaps not all those judges, but a majority of them. It would be entirely inconceivable that a judge appointed by the federal government to the Superior Court of Quebec, for example, could not hear a case in English. However, it is a different matter when we talk about francophones outside Quebec. I do not need to spell it out.

There are francophones throughout New Brunswick and Ontario. The same is true in Manitoba, where there are francophones in the Winnipeg area and elsewhere. There may not be as many in Saskatchewan, but there are still quite a few.

You know the area, Mr. Speaker, and it is certainly useful for you to be able to speak French because you have francophone constituents. Obviously, there are many francophones in Alberta, right up into the northern part of the province.

I had an uncle who had a wonderful name, the same as mine. He was a missionary in northern Alberta, where he seldom spoke English. He spoke French in the diocese north of Edmonton. Members will say that there are fewer francophones in British Columbia, but I went there recently and spoke to people in French.

Obviously, the government is doing the same thing in these provinces. I can tell you what happened to me when I went to the Northwest Territories in 1995 or 1996. I met with people, including a very interesting woman. As we talked, I learned that her mother had been raised in L'Orignal, the beautiful little town in eastern Ontario where I grew up. In short, there are francophones all across the country. It is very important that the government enable these people to use the official language of their choice.

To answer my colleague's question, it is very important that bilingual judges be appointed across Canada so that people everywhere have access to a bilingual legal system. Every time the government gives bilingualism short shrift, it makes a serious mistake. As was reported in this House not long ago, the minority Conservative government has made mistakes in Ontario recently.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

There is one minute left for questions and comments. With a very brief question or comment, the hon. member for York West.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I note for my hon. colleague that the whole issue of bilingual judges is extremely important. I have only a short time for this question, but in respect to the current government looking at the pool of names it would have, is the hon. member confident that there are sufficient names for the committee to be able to review the appointments of judges to ensure that the judges are bilingual?

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if I understand correctly, my colleague would like to know whether the government has the means—I am not talking about financial means, but human resources means—to be able to properly evaluate whether a judge is bilingual.

At the beginning of my speech, 15 or 20 minutes ago, I spoke about the advisory councils in the provinces. These councils are made up of representatives from the government, the bar, the province and so on. Obviously these councils have the human resources to ensure that the candidates or the judges appointed are bilingual and that they can continue to offer services in one of this country's official languages, based on the choice of the people involved.

Mr. Speaker, you seem to be impatient about my response. I am finished, and I thank you very much.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Judges Act.

I have been in this place long enough to know that there are times when bills are presented to the House by the government and the argument is made that it is a housekeeping bill, that there really should be no delay and that it should be passed quickly by the House. In some cases that is true, but it is not always the case. Sometimes we have to dig a little deeper to find out exactly what the piece of legislation purports to do.

I must say when I look at this bill there is a certain logic to it. However, if we put it in the broader context of the Conservative government and how it has approached appointments generally, it does cause one to pause and to reflect somewhat.

I am thinking of a number of things. One of them is the government's initiative to set up a public appointments commission. This was a plank in the 2006 election. The idea, as I understood it, was that the Conservative Party was going to have a non-partisan system of appointments. It was going to set up an arm's length commission and have all the major appointments go through this commission. I am not sure that appointment of judges would go through that particular commission, but the subject is appointments, generally.

The government picked three members for the commission. In fact a very good friend of mine, Roy MacLaren, was asked if he would serve. The government selected Mr. Gwyn Morgan as the chair of the public appointments commission. Mr. Morgan went before a committee of the House of Commons. He was subjected to some questioning. In fact the committee decided in the end that it was not comfortable with Mr. Morgan's appointment as the chairman of the public appointments commission, notwithstanding Mr. Morgan's very strong record in the private sector, in the oil and gas industry, as president and CEO of EnCana. He had said some things that raised the ire of a number of the members of the committee. It was no secret at the time that Mr. Morgan was an active fundraiser for the Conservative Party. His appointment went to the committee. The committee did not like the appointment of Mr. Gwyn Morgan and the committee said no.

That did not need to stop that whole process, if there was some need to have a public appointments commission. If the government could have achieved this laudable objective of having completely non-partisan appointments, something which I think the cynics in town and across Canada would argue and debate, but nonetheless a very laudable objective, if it actually had decided to pursue that, what would have been the problem with the government saying that Mr. Morgan did not make the cut, but there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Canadians who would be qualified to chair such a commission. Instead the Conservatives picked up their toys, ran out of the sandbox and said, “If you are not going to play with our toys, we are not playing with you”. That was the end of the public appointments commission, notwithstanding that this was a party plank of some importance.

Of course the Conservatives use it as an opportunity to blame the committee and blame the Liberals, and say, “We are getting the job done”. I am so tired of that expression. They have been in power now for over two years, but we do not get a decent answer in question period; it is always about the 13 years the Liberals were in power, blah, blah, blah.

In any case, they could have proceeded with the public appointments commission and demonstrated that they wanted a non-partisan process for appointments and picked someone else, notwithstanding Mr. Gwyn Morgan's career and his very good qualifications in the sense of the private sector, someone who was not perhaps so actively involved in a partisan way. But no, they did not. They picked up their toys and off they went and said, “It is those old Liberals again. They are obstructionist”.

I begin to wonder when I look at the bill before us today what is really behind an act to amend the Judges Act and the appointments. Not many people in the House would argue that we have a backlog in appointment of judges, but we also have a backlog in immigration. Many people should be appointed to the Immigration and Refugee Board. In fact, I was told by one of my colleagues that there are something like 30 vacancies outstanding, perhaps more. These are the people who adjudicate on refugee claims and they get involved with appeals and a whole range of other issues. What is stopping the Conservative government from appointing these Immigration and Refugee Board judges?

When I look at the bill before us I wonder what really is going on behind this seemingly innocuous bill to amend the Judges Act. We know we have backlogs in immigration. In fact the government, if I might, sneakily put changes to the immigration policy of this country into the budget implementation act, Bill C-50. The government added it in at one of the clauses at the end, almost as an afterthought, but it is not an afterthought. It fundamentally changes the way we deal with immigration policy.

We know there are ways of dealing with backlogs, such as to hire more people and put them into missions abroad. That is what the Liberal government was trying to do. We went to committee and the committee rejected the proposal in the estimates, so there we are. But that is the way to deal with the backlog. The idea that the minister would have complete discretion should raise some hackles, as should Bill C-31 because it raises similar issues.

I would like to talk also about the Senate. When we are talking about appointments, I know there are those opposite and indeed some on this side of the House who would like to see the Senate reformed, but we all know as reasonable people that the Senate will only be reformed through constitutional change.

While Conservative Party members go on and on about how bills are delayed in the Senate and the Senate is obstructing the will of Parliament, the Conservatives have the ability now to appoint, I am not sure exactly how many senators, but they could appoint a stack of Conservative senators. The way the Constitution of this--

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, perhaps the member needs a lesson on how to filibuster. He has to be talking about Bill C-31. He cannot just mention Bill C-31 and change from filibustering and talk about immigration. Then he says Bill C-31 which makes it all right for him to go into a bit of a diatribe on what he thinks about Senate reform. This has to stop at this point. The member must be relevant on talking about Bill C-31 if he indeed wants to continue this filibuster.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I thank the parliamentary secretary for raising the point. Perhaps if the member for Etobicoke North could bring his remarks back to the contents of the bill as it is as third reading, he could continue on with his remarks.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I must say I object to this being characterized as a filibustering effort. There is no such thing involved at all. The member opposite tries to conjure up these conspiracy theories, but he knows full well that we have a serious bill before us, Bill C-31, and as responsible members of the House of Commons, we are here to debate it. That is exactly what I will do.

I was trying to put the appointment of judges in the broader context of appointments, appointments with respect to the Senate, appointments with respect to the Immigration and Refugee Board and appointments that were supposedly going to be handled through a public appointments commission that never happened.

I am coming now to the question more specifically before us with respect to judges. First of all we need to understand that judges have to be non-partisan. It does not necessarily mean that judges do not bring their own personal perspectives to the job. This is obviously the case. A judge who is going to be appointed will have a certain bias toward--