Bill C-9

An Act to amend the Judges Act

This enactment amends the Judges Act to replace the process through which the conduct of federally appointed judges is reviewed by the Canadian Judicial Council. It establishes a new process for reviewing allegations of misconduct that are not serious enough to warrant a judge’s removal from office and makes changes to the process by which recommendations regarding removal from office can be made to the Minister of Justice. As with the provisions it replaces, this new process also applies to persons, other than judges, who are appointed under an Act of Parliament to hold office during good behaviour.

Motion That Debate Be Not Further Adjourned

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member's question gets to the core of a matter in front of us, which is that, if we are direct with each other, tell each other exactly how many speakers there are going to be and how much time is needed on a particular bill, then maybe we will need additional hours or maybe we will not. I will be very direct. Oftentimes, it has only been the Conservative Party from which I have not been able to get straight or clear answers on how much time is needed.

What does that mean? Let us look at Bill C-9, which was a technical bill that was supported by all parties, and for days we ended up debating this bill, with no clarity on when it was going to end. Then, when we had an issue with interpretation and lost 20 minutes, we asked for that 20 minutes back and the Conservatives said no, meaning that we had an entire other day of House business that was wasted. Every day of House business is critical, and it needs to be used for real issues.

We are saying we should focus on the real priorities that we have and, if and when we have unanimity, we do not need to chew up enormous House time.

Extension of Sitting Hours and Conduct of Extended Proceedings

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

Madam Speaker, I will use the first few moments of my remarks to continue with the point I was making, because it really is astounding to hear that member.

On a personal level, as House leaders, we all get to know each other a little. We have extra meetings throughout the week to talk about the business of the House, things like the Board of Internal Economy and other aspects about the place. I have always found that my counterpart on the government bench has been decent to work with, and I want to say that off the bat. We all come from different political perspectives, we are all human beings here, and I do appreciate that about him. However, to listen to a representative from the government talk about misinformation, divisiveness and the battle for the heart and soul of Canadians, this is a government that has been caught telling blatant falsehoods time and time again.

I want to share with the hon. member that when I referenced the scriptural part about “Go and sin no more” would I ever presume to hold myself up to that standard. I can assure him that I make no pretensions whatsoever. However, I will let the member in on a little secret. In a couple of hours we will have question period, and we will hear misinformation and falsehoods coming from the government side. We will hear the Prime Minister deny that he has a role in inflation.

We have a Prime Minister who has directly caused the worst inflation Canadians have had in 40 years, and on a daily basis he gets up and he denies that. He gets up and tries to say that it is all these external factors, that it is kind of like the weather, that inflation is just happening to us, so we better bundle up, add another layer and shove some twenties in our pockets as those prices will get us if we are not looking carefully. It is just nonsense. We know that his money printing and deficits caused the Bank of Canada to bankroll his out-of-control spending, a good chunk of which had nothing to do with COVID. That is why we have inflation, but we do not hear that. Instead, we hear misinformation and falsehoods, with the government trying to blame everybody else for the inflation we see.

There is an expression many people are probably very aware of, which goes something along the lines of “Your poor planning does not constitute an emergency on my part.” The government House leader referenced a couple of examples of legislation that his own government is responsible for the delay. He talked about Bill C-9, which sat on the Order Paper for six months before the government called it. When it did call it, the Liberals were surprised that members wanted to speak to it, that they wanted to point out some of its deficiencies. They do not like that.

The member also talked about Bill S-5 needing six days of debate, as if six days is a long time. Bill S-5 is comprehensive legislation that would amend several acts, has a whole bunch of new regulations as it relates to the chemical industry and all kinds of interrelated aspects. Members of Parliament need to draw out, in their time in the House, some of the flaws in that bill to raise awareness. Many stakeholders and industry groups will be affected by that legislation.

When we come to this place, we do that due diligence and we take our time to highlight that. We allow time for people who are affected by the legislation to react, to educate their members or their colleagues or to educate us. Sometimes we start debating legislation and all of a sudden our agenda gets booked by people wanting to meet with us to tell us what the impact would be if the legislation is or is not passed, and all that takes time.

The government does not give every single Canadian a heads up as to what it is doing. There is no daily Canada Gazette email to Canadians that says that in four or five months this is what the government will be doing so let it know what they think. There is a small notice period where the government tells the House what it is going to do and then tables it at first reading, and often we are on to the second reading debate the very next day. Many Canadians are getting that information for the very first time, and it takes time for people to inform their members of Parliament as to how they will be affected.

Acting as if six days in the House before a bill gets to committee is an inordinately long period of time is ridiculous, especially when we consider that two of those days were one-hour debates. The government called the debate for second reading on short days. In fact, if I am not mistaken, the NDP critic for the legislation on Bill S-5 had to wait until the third day to conclude remarks because of that. If the government is saying that it does not want to listen to the NDP members give speeches, I have some affinity for that and some sympathy, but I do not think it is proper to ram through a motion like this and, as a result, not allow for enough time for NDP members to have their say.

I certainly believe in hearing all points of view and all voices before the House takes a decision, so this is just a completely false and bogus argument altogether. There is nothing to it; there is no justification for it.

What is it akin to? The government House leader spoke a lot about the need for the House to get things done. I think a lot of Canadians would agree with that. They see us in this chamber. We know the issues that are affecting them on a daily a basis and they want some action. They want their elected representatives to tackle those issues. However, they also do not want the government to have a completely unfettered hand.

Every democracy tries to put in place not only mechanisms for decisions to be made, but mechanisms for those who oppose those decisions to, at the very least, have an impact and to limit the unfettered power that the executive branch may have. In Canada, we have some checks and balances. Other countries have more. Other countries make the inability to get things done a feature of their system. Many people might look to the United States and see a very complicated process that takes a lot of time and requires a political party to have control in all three branches of the government with respect to both houses, congress and the senate, and the presidency to really make ambitious changes. They might look at that and say it is a flaw, which it may very well be at times. The system may have been designed to make it difficult to get things done.

The Canadian system was designed to make it easier for the government to implement its agenda, but it is not without checks and balances in and of itself. We have a second chamber in our Parliament, the Senate, that provides many of the same rights and privileges that many members of Parliament have. It goes through the same process. Once a bill leaves the House and goes to the Senate, it has its three readings. It has committee study. There have been occasions in Canadian history where the Senate has held up government legislation when acting as that kind of check.

The calendar and the daily program is also a check on the government's power. The Prime Minister cannot come in and start moving legislation, have it rubber-stamped and sail it through. The government has to prioritize. It has to look at the calendar and the number of sitting days and prioritize its legislation. If it brings something in that the opposition has no intention of supporting, because it is poorly drafted or will have terrible consequences, then it has to understand that the House will take longer to pass that kind of legislation, which will have an impact on other bills it wants to pass.

Therefore, by the government giving itself the power to extend these sittings, it really does take away a very important check on the unfettered power of the Prime Minister. It is going to weaken the ability for the House of Commons to put the brakes on some of these terrible ideas we see coming from the government side.

The Conservatives will make no apology for fighting the government's inflation-causing agenda. Yes, we absolutely will go through pieces of legislation to ruthlessly scrutinize whether they will add to the cost of government, because we know the cost of government is driving up the cost of living. There is a direct correlation between the massive deficit spending that the Prime Minister has put Canadians through over the past years and the record-high prices Canadians are paying at the grocery store and the fuel pump.

Therefore, every time the government brings in legislation, that is our first and foremost lens. The Conservatives get out the sharp pencils and the extra scraps of paper and we start to ruthlessly scrutinize it to see if it will add to the cost of government, if it will grow the obligation the state has to pay out of taxpayer funds or if it will add extra compliance costs to industries that are already suffering under some of the biggest regulatory and tax burdens among our major trading partners. It takes time to do that. It takes time to not just do that research, but meet with those stakeholders.

I have been a shadow minister responsible for infrastructure. Among my colleagues today, I see many shadow ministers from a wide variety of portfolios. I know that I speak for all of us when I say that, when we get legislation, our speech in the House of Commons, the 10 or 20 minutes of analysis we provide, is just a small fraction of the work we do. We instantly start meeting with the people who will be affected by the legislation, to hear directly from them.

The government talked about Bill S-5. I have never been in the plastics industry, but I sure as heck know a lot of people who are, and they know exactly how this legislation would affect them. I know people who work in various aspects of manufacturing, distributing and retail who would all be affected by some of the regulatory burdens in Bill S-5. We have to meet with them, take what one groups says and weigh it off against what another group says, and use our intelligence and wisdom to sift through all of that information before we make a determination as to whether or not we are going to vote yes or no.

Debate in the House of Commons acts as a check on the government, preventing it from being able to ram through its agenda, and that is really important in today's context because the Canadian people have refused to give the Liberal Party a majority government in two elections. We all know that is very disappointing to the Prime Minister. He was hoping that an election might have cleansed his reputation after the corruption his government was involved in came to light with the SNC-Lavalin scandal and his own personal acts of racism, when he committed racist acts by putting on blackface so many times he has lost count.

We know the Prime Minister was hoping to get a majority government to have a palate cleanse of those things and to redeem his reputation, but Canadians did not give him that. Canadians do not want this party to ram through its agenda. They want those checks and balances to make sure there is a lot of oversight and a lot of scrutiny on what the government is doing. Extending the hours on a selective basis is going to allow the government to ram through more of its agenda. It is trying to avoid that accountability by stealth.

It is also very hypocritical. I am not using unparliamentary language when I quote the government House leader who called himself a hypocrite. I have to say that he has some justification for that when it comes to the government's excuse for this measure. He is talking about the fact that there is not enough time to get through the legislation when it was the party that prorogued just to get out of a corruption investigation scandal.

For anybody watching who might not be up to speed on all the fancy words we use in this place, proroguing is kind of like a big reset button. It is like cancelling the rest of the House's sittings for a period of time, and it resets everything. It is like a big eraser on a whiteboard of all the bills. The government is saying it has to now sit late to enact all of the bills that had been completely cancelled and had to start from scratch. We did not do that. The opposition party cannot prorogue Parliament. There is only one person who can, and that is the Prime Minister. That is what he did. There is only one person who can call elections in this country, and that is the Prime Minister.

The previous Parliament had a very similar makeup to what it does now. We had an election last year just because the Prime Minister decided that he wanted one, just like when he prorogued Parliament during the WE group of companies investigation. Do members remember that? In the early days of the pandemic, when Canadians were still suffering through some of the harshest lockdowns around the world and being told they could not visit their loved ones in hospitals, when children were being told that they could not go to school, and when young and healthy athletes were being told they were not allowed to play sports or finish their year, what did the Prime Minister do? The Prime Minister never misses an opportunity to take advantage and reward his friends.

While Canadians were focused on their health and trying to save their businesses after these punitive restrictions prevented them from earning a living, while Canadians were all focused on the very horrifying impact on their lives in so many ways, what did the Prime Minister do? He took the time to take out the chequebook that is written on the taxpayers' bank account and reward his friends at the WE group of companies by giving them an untendered half a billion dollars of Canadian taxpayers' money.

When he got caught, he pressed the big reset button. While that investigation was going on, he took out the big whiteboard eraser and—

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

moved:

(a) until Friday, June 23, 2023, a minister of the Crown may, with the agreement of the House leader of another recognized party, rise from his or her seat at any time during a sitting, but no later than 6:30 p.m., and request that the ordinary hour of daily adjournment for a subsequent sitting be 12:00 a.m., provided that it be 10:00 p.m. on a day when a debate pursuant to Standing Order 52 or 53.1 is to take place, and that such a request shall be deemed adopted;

(b) on a sitting day extended pursuant to paragraph (a),

(i) proceedings on any opposition motion pursuant to Standing Order 81(16) shall conclude no later than 5:30 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday, 6:30 p.m. on a Monday or 1:30 p.m. on a Friday, on an allotted day for the business of supply, except pursuant to Standing Order 81(18)(c),

(ii) after 6:30 p.m., the Speaker shall not receive any quorum calls or dilatory motions, and shall only accept a request for unanimous consent after receiving a notice from the House leaders or whips of all recognized parties stating that they are in agreement with such a request,

(iii) motions to proceed to the orders of the day, and to adjourn the debate or the House may be moved after 6:30 p.m. by a minister of the Crown, including on a point of order, and such motions be deemed adopted,

(iv) the time provided for Government Orders shall not be extended pursuant to Standing Orders 33(2), 45(7.1) or 67.1(2);

(c) until Friday, June 23, 2023,

(i) during consideration of the estimates on the last allotted day of each supply period, pursuant to Standing Orders 81(17) and 81(18), when the Speaker interrupts the proceedings for the purpose of putting forthwith all questions necessary to dispose of the estimates,

(A) all remaining motions to concur in the votes for which a notice of opposition was filed shall be deemed to have been moved and seconded, the questions deemed put and recorded divisions deemed requested,

(B) the Speaker shall have the power to combine the said motions for voting purposes, provided that, in exercising this power, the Speaker be guided by the same principles and practices used at report stage,

(ii) a motion for third reading of a government bill may be made in the same sitting during which the said bill has been concurred in at report stage;

(d) on Wednesday, December 14, 2022, Thursday, December 15, 2022, or Friday, December 16, 2022, a minister of the Crown may move, without notice, a motion to adjourn the House until Monday, January 30, 2023, provided that the House shall be adjourned pursuant to Standing Order 28 and that the said motion shall be decided immediately without debate or amendment;

(e) on Wednesday, June 21, 2023, Thursday, June 22, 2023, or Friday, June 23, 2023, a minister of the Crown may move, without notice, a motion to adjourn the House until Monday, September 18, 2023, provided that the House shall be adjourned pursuant to Standing Order 28 and that the said motion shall be decided immediately without debate or amendment; and

(f) notwithstanding the order adopted on Thursday, June 23, 2022, and Standing Order 45(6), no recorded division requested between 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 15, 2022 and the adjournment on Friday, December 16, 2022, and between 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 22, 2023 and the adjournment on Friday, June 23, 2023, shall be deferred, except for any recorded division requested in regard to a Private Members’ Business item, for which the provisions of the order adopted on Thursday, June 23, 2022, shall continue to apply.

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise to get an opportunity to speak to this motion. I want to start at the outset by thanking my colleagues, the hon. House leaders, for the areas in which we have been able to find co-operation. There have been a number of different areas in which we have been able to work constructively together. The intention of this motion is to be an expansion and not a reduction of that.

I am going to speak very briefly to some of my concerns with respect to the legislative agenda we have and some of the challenges that currently exist with that, and then I am going to speak more broadly to the state of discourse and our engagement with one another in this place politically.

It is my hope that this will provoke more dialogue among the parties to make clear what exactly our respective intentions are in terms of the number of speakers and length of time taken with each bill. It has been a source of frustration to not know how many speakers are going to be put up, specifically by the Conservatives, and that is, frankly, obstruction by stealth. I will give specific examples.

Bill S-5, which this House voted for unanimously, took six days of House time just to get to committee. This is something that was voted on unanimously. More specifically, let us take a look at Bill C-9, which is a very technical bill on judges. That bill, again, was supported unanimously. However, when there were interpretation issues in the House and we asked for an additional 20 minutes so we did not need to spend an entire additional House day dealing with this bill, which was unanimously supported, that was rejected by the Conservatives.

Although most times we have not been told how many speakers there will be, we have been told that the Conservatives want more speakers on this bill. This motion would provide the opportunity to do that. I have heard the hon. House leader for the Conservative Party indicate concern with committees. I share those concerns and want to work with him to make sure committees are in no way impeded and may conduct their business without interruption, so both committees and the House can do their respective work.

I have just a couple of comments, though, because this is an inflection point and we have a choice as to the direction we take right now. If there is upset about sitting later hours, there are solutions. Simply give us the number of speakers and have a frank and honest conversation about how long is reasonable for a bill to take. Let us have that conversation understanding no one party here has a majority, which means no one party should be able to dictate to all the other parties that something does not move forward.

It is totally fair to oppose something. It is totally fair to vote against it. It is totally fair to disagree with it vociferously. However, if a majority of the House wants to move forward, then the fair question is how many voices need to be heard from those who are not in the majority to allow the House to do its business. Giving no answer is not an acceptable response and is not something that can be worked with. Most reasonable people would see that.

This is really a call or a provocation for a conversation. In that conversation, I want to invoke a dear friend, who was the deputy leader of the government in this place. His name was Arnold Chan. I go back to the speech Arnold gave as he was mustering the last of his energy in his last days of life to speak to this chamber about how we need to work with one another.

Arnold was one of my best friends in the world, and watching him die was profoundly painful, but his words always echo in my ears. One of Arnold's chief frustrations was that this chamber, this place that was so important to him, was often reduced to just reading talking points with one another: us saying how wonderful we are and the other side saying how terrible we are, and them saying they are wonderful and us saying they are terrible. Of course, in that back-and-forth, the truth of the situation and the difficulty of what we are going through is lost. In difficult times, we lose the opportunity to genuinely hear each other.

Let us be straight about where we are. These are the most difficult times the planet has faced since World War II. People across the world are scared. They are watching the price of their basic necessities of life rising, be they groceries, rent or any of a myriad things. They are watching a war in Ukraine. They are watching horrors in Iran. They are seeing climate change ravage their communities, and they are hungry for answers.

The truth is that in really hard times, often we do not know all the answers. In fact, if any one of us was to stand in this House and say we know what the world is going to be in six months, we would be lying. We live in incredibly turbulent times, and I am looking forward to hearing the hon. House leader's speech soon. We live in a time where we have to be straight with each other about what those hard things are and what the solutions are.

I really love New Orleans. I had the opportunity to go down there, and sometimes it is easier in another country to reflect on the state of their politics than it is on our own, but when I had an opportunity to talk to a young Black lady in a store about the state of being Black in America, how unjust it was and how hopeless she felt, she did not think that anybody was really speaking truthfully about the situation she and her community were facing.

That makes me think of the people we represent on both sides of the aisle, who are suffering in so many different ways that we do not always have the answer to, whether it is somebody who walks into our office who is finding they cannot afford to pay rent or somebody who walks into our office who is facing the horror of some unimaginable terror that is happening in another part of the world. When we look at them and try to give them compassion and answers, too often we all, and I will own this, have been prone to exaggeration and to having more solutions than we actually have. However, what we do in that exaggeration, on both sides, is that we allow them to think we do not really see the picture for what it is.

I will give a very specific example. On that same trip, when I walked into Studio Be, an art gallery of Black artists who are talking about the experience of being Black and the terrors they face, it was a deeply uncomfortable experience for me. It is not my country, and a lot of the horrors that were being written about are not happening to our citizens, but the injustice that has been visited upon Black people in our own country is very hard to look at and very hard to respond to. That place, though, met all of that injustice with such love, compassion, truth and forgiveness that it calls on all of us to do the same. We can yell at each other. We can deride each other, but there are old lessons that are being forgotten in that.

We look at old wisdom from something like The Lord's Prayer, something we have said so many times. It says, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Let us think about that as a covenant, that we cannot move forward unless we can truly understand the suffering of somebody else and understand their position.

I think, and I maybe I am Pollyanna to believe it, that we have to have more compassion for one another. I think that compassion, empathy and forgiveness are not weaknesses, but the bedrock foundation of civilization and the only things that have ever held us together. I think that in the darkest hours, and let us not lie to each other, we are in dark hours as our hospitals fill up with children, as we worry about whether key surgeries can move forward, and as we worry about the state of our planet, we need that compassion and empathy for one another, and we need the realness in our dialogue. Why do we need that realness? It is because, when we live in an environment of “gotcha” and playing games, we distort the truth.

That same woman I talked to in a shop, who was talking about the horrible conditions that she felt existed for her community, told me the world was run by 12 people. She is a deeply intelligent woman, but she believed in conspiracies because people did not speak what was true and because they attempted to take an opportunity to play games with it.

I look at the hon. House leader for the Conservatives, who is laughing right now, and I say to him—

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Yes, I was. I want to come back to Mr. Serré's motion. I agree with the gist of it in general. It calls for no limits on the clause-by-clause study. I agree with that, but I would like us to have time to hear from witnesses, because that's very important.

Ever since the Liberals and the NDP formed an alliance, we've been hit with time allocation motions and closure motions. Since the last election, not including Government Business No. 20, there have been 27 fast-tracked bill stages, five motions adopted using 18 time allocation motions, eight closure motions, 11 time allocation motions, four super closure motions, including two aimed at fast-tracking the committee stage, the report stage and third reading, and two to fast-track the second reading in committee stage, the report stage and third reading.

On October 26, there was a time allocation motion on Bill C‑9, which would amend the—

Judges Act

[The Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

It being 3:10 p.m., pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading stage of Bill C‑9.

Call in the members.

The House resumed from October 28 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.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

Are there any other members who wish to speak to Bill C-9?

Is the House ready for the question?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think this is something that may have never happened in the House before, a member beginning a speech on a bill in one seat and continuing it in a separate seat on the very same day. This was made possible, of course, by a standing order change that allows us to sit absolutely anywhere in the House. I was tempted to do it from the Prime Minister's seat, but that would have involved a little too many logistics. I was not sure we would get back to the debate, so I will do it from this seat here.

We are debating Bill C-9, an act to amend the Judges Act, and we are at second reading. I want to talk about the substance of the bill. It is actually, I think, a very good bill, and I will deal with that in a minute.

First, I want to talk about the fact the government is once again rushing this debate through and imposing closure. As I consider its actions, the thought that occurs to me is that, out there in the normal world, there is a saying. It is that “your lack of planning does not equal my crisis,” but this is the House of Commons of Canada. As long as they have the support of the New Democrats, the Liberals can be as disorganized as they want and can create crises for themselves and then impose limits on democracy and open debate in order to rush through crises of their own making.

In the case of the bill, which has now been time allocated, a version of it was introduced as Bill S-5, a government bill in the Senate, in May 2021, but it died on the Order Paper, because the Prime Minister, in his infinite wisdom, decided to call the least necessary election in Canadian history, which resulted in our having exactly the same seat breakdown we had prior to the election. However, it did cause everything on the Order Paper to be wiped off the Order Paper, and when we resumed in the autumn of 2021, a new bill was introduced on the Order Paper, on December 1, 2021, as Bill S-3. Subsequently, that bill was dropped and Bill C-9, the bill we are presently debating, found its way onto the Order Paper on December 16, 2021. It then sat on the Order Paper, undebated, for exactly six months to the day, until June 16, 2022.

The House rises in time for Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, which is on the 24th of June. The bill, therefore, had a couple days of time for debate before the House rose. Then, with a whole summer going by, it did not come back until very recently, when we had been here for a month. This makes the point that the reason there is a rush, if there is a rush at all, is that the government has caused a delay. I should point out as well that the purpose of the bill is to make changes to the Judges Act, which was implemented in 1971, so we are talking about changes to something that has been in place for 50 years.

Saying this constitutes the kind of crisis that warrants putting limits on debate is, in my view, simply unreasonable and simply a reflection of the fact that it is now reflexive for the current government to put time limits on all debates on everything.

Now, let me talk about the substance of the bill.

Bill C-9 deals primarily with judges, but as for the provisions it replaces, this new process would also apply to persons other than judges who are appointed under an act of Parliament to hold office under what is known as “good behaviour”. The question of what constitutes “good behaviour” is a matter that needs to be updated from time to time, particularly in the world of the law and the actions of judges, because if something goes wrong in the court system and if judges or courts act inappropriately, we say that the law is brought into disrepute. Bringing the law into disrepute is the worst thing a judge can do. What constitutes “disrepute” does change over time as we get greater sensitivity, for example, to gender issues, which lie at the heart of the present piece of legislation, or to concerns relating to the ability of people who face various forms of disabilities to communicate with the courts and so on.

Standards within society do change. I think they usually improve, and it is reasonable to update this from time to time.

Right now, the way it works is that, should a federally appointed judge be found to be potentially in breach of their responsibilities, the issue is sent to the Canadian Judicial Council for review. The bill would establish a new process for reviewing allegations of misconduct, allegations that are not serious enough to warrant a judge's removal from office, and would make changes to the process by which recommendations regarding removal from office can be made to the Minister of Justice.

The bill would specifically modify the existing judicial review process by establishing a process for complaints serious enough to warrant removal from office and another for offences that could warrant other sanctions, such as counselling, continuing education and reprimands.

Currently, if misconduct is less serious, a single member of the Canadian Judicial Council holds the initial review and may negotiate with a judge for remedy. I should mention as well that the Canadian Judicial Council was set up under the existing law. It dates back to 1971 and is mandated to promote efficiency and uniformity and improve the quality of judicial services in all superior courts in Canada.

The reasons a judge could be removed from office include infirmity, misconduct, failure in the due execution of judicial office, and the judge's being “in a position that a reasonable, fair-minded and informed observer would consider to be incompatible with the due execution of judicial office”.

Under the new rules, a screening officer could dismiss complaints rather than referring them to the review panel, should they appear frivolous or improper. Certain things, such as a complaint that alleges sexual harassment or discrimination, may not be dismissed. The full screening criteria would be published by the Canadian Judicial Council.

These amendments address the shortcomings of the current process by imposing mandatory sanctions on a judge when a complaint of misconduct is found to be justified but not to be serious enough to warrant removal from office. Again, such sanctions could include counselling, continuing education and reprimands.

In the name of transparency, this legislation would require that the Canadian Judicial Council include the number of complaints received and how they were resolved in its public annual report, something that is a very sound idea.

Since its inception in 1971, the Canadian Judicial Council has completed inquiries into eight complaints considered serious enough that they would warrant removal from the bench. Four of them, in fact, did result in recommendations for removal.

Under the new process, as laid out in Bill C-9, the Canadian Judicial Council would continue to preside over the judicial complaints process, which would start with a three-person panel. If the complaint is serious enough that it might warrant removal from the bench, it could be referred to a separate, five-person hearing panel.

As I am out of time, I will just make the observation that, on the whole, this is a good piece of legislation. I am glad it is before us. It could have been before us earlier. I very much welcome the opportunity to vote in favour and send this off to committee, but of course I object to the rush we have been put in to do that.

The House resumed 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.

[Brad Redekopp, Conservative, Saskatoon West, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and pleasure to speak in this House on behalf of the citizens of Saskatoon West. Of course, I am rising today to speak to the bill before us, Bill C-9, which makes changes to the way federally appointed judges can be removed for misconduct.

My approach today will be a bit different. I am not a lawyer, so I am not well versed in how law works and all the details and technicalities of it. The best example of that was from yesterday when I was privileged to attend the justice committee. I was listening to witnesses on the subject of Bill C-28, the extreme intoxication law. It is unbelievable that in this country, a person who gets so drunk that they commit a crime that results in great harm to a person can get off for it and there are no consequences. That is exactly what happened. That is why the government brought in Bill C-28 earlier. It was supposedly to fix this.

As a layperson at the committee yesterday, I was listening to all my learned colleagues ask very intelligent questions that were going over my head. I was listening to professors explain the legal technicalities of everything. However, one thing that did come out clear was that it is absolutely wrong that if a person commits a crime, they do not face consequences simply because they were too drunk. Clearly, that needs to be fixed.

The more troubling thing that came across to me was that the government attempted to fix this law in a very hurried way earlier this year. Essentially, it rammed through legislation to supposedly close a loophole. What I heard yesterday was that what the Liberals rammed through in a hurry, without proper consultation and without actually talking to people, has not solved the problem. In fact, it may have made it worse. We need to be very careful in the House when we propose solutions and ram them through the House without proper due diligence, because we can actually make things worse. That was the main thing I took away from yesterday.

I also want to note another piece of legislation going through the House right now. It is Bill S-4. It amends the process for peace officers to apply for and obtain a warrant using telecommunications rather than appearing in person. It expands the abilities for accused and offenders to appear remotely by audio conference and video conference. It also allows prospective jurors in a jury selection process to appear by video conference.

This is a bill that came about because of COVID. There were some changes needed in our system to accommodate more remote appearances, as members can see. What I find interesting is that these changes were due to the COVID epidemic we have, which started two years ago. It has taken two years for the Liberal government to get this to second reading in this House.

I find it odd that on one hand, some legislation gets rammed through almost instantaneously, like Bill C-28, while in the case of Bill S-4, it lollygags along for a while. Maybe COVID will be in the rear-view mirror when it finally gets passed. I find it quite rich when the government talks about those on the Conservative side obstructing things, when we are trying to do the proper due diligence and trying to make sure that we do not get bad laws.

This brings me to Bill C-9. This bill was originally introduced as a Senate bill, Bill S-5, in 2021. The bill modifies the existing judicial review process by establishing a process for complaints serious enough to warrant removal from office and another for offences that would warrant other sanctions, such as counselling, continuing education and reprimands. Currently, if the misconduct is less serious, one Canadian Judicial Council member who conducts the initial review may negotiate with the judge for an appropriate remedy.

The bill states that the reasons a judge could be removed from office include:

(a) infirmity;

(b) misconduct;

(c) failure in the due execution of judicial office;

(d) the judge is in a position that a reasonable, fair-minded and informed observer would consider to be incompatible with the due execution of judicial office.

Also, a screening officer can dismiss complaints rather than referring them to the review panel should they seem frivolous or improper.

Federal judges are appointed for life, and it is absolutely critical that they are free of political inference. It is important that we have mechanisms in place to deal with them and remove them from office if that extreme point is necessary. Parliament sets laws, though, and judges need to respect the will of Parliament. A good example is the mandatory minimum sentences that the previous Conservative government brought in.

Any violent criminal, regardless of race, gender and sexual orientation, should be treated as equal. The offender should face a jury of their peers and if convicted should get the appropriate punishment. Prison time will keep that person off the streets so they cannot engage in further criminal activity.

Mental health issues, as well as drug and alcohol abuse, need to be addressed and monitored by trained personnel. Therapy and 12-step programs that are offered in prisons must be made mandatory for prisoners. Under house arrest, there is no way to ensure that these offenders get the help they need.

We also need to consider victim safety when we are sentencing offenders. A sad but real truth is that violent crime is often committed within a family. It can be spousal abuse, sexual exploitation of a child, custodial kidnapping or robbery for the purposes of illicit substances. The people in closest proximity are always the most accessible victims. If a judge is required to sentence a spousal abuser to live at home rather than go to prison, what happens to the abused spouse and children? Do they flee to a crisis centre, or will they will get revictimized?

I want to talk a bit about Saskatoon and my riding of Saskatoon West. It is an awesome and beautiful place to live and work. My wife and I call it home. For years before I became a member of Parliament, I was a home builder. I built new homes for families moving into the riding.

First as a candidate and now as an MP, I can say that I have knocked on almost every door in Saskatoon West. As I have walked through those neighbourhoods, I have seen some of the areas of highest crime. In the past year, there have been 389 cases of reported sexual violations in Saskatoon, 2,303 reported cases of assault, 65 reported cases of kidnapping and abduction and 759 cases of violation under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Saskatoon is well above the national crime severity index of 73.4 in Canada's largest cities and has a crime severity index of 118, and it was ranked fourth behind Lethbridge, Winnipeg and Kelowna in 2020. Much of this crime is in the areas right around my constituency office. My constituency office is on the convergence of these neighbourhoods, and according to the Saskatoon Police Service, it is in the highest crime area of Saskatoon. As a result, we have to be very diligent in our office. We have gotten to know many of the people who live in the neighbourhood. They frequent our office and frequent the area by our office, and we have developed relationships with them.

My staff have a security door and a buzzer system in place to screen people before they come into the office. Still, my office has been broken into and I have had my House of Commons computer stolen. An employee of mine had the window on his car broken just because somebody wanted a few quarters that were sitting in there. A lot of this is because of addicts. We have a lot of addiction issues that drive many of the crime problems we have.

This is something that I agree with the government on. The approach on how to fix it, though, is where we differ. I believe in the miracles of alcohol and drug treatment through 12-step programs and abstention. The NDP-Liberals believe in what is called harm reduction.

What I think needs to happen is that addicts need to be treated with love and compassion, which is offered through 12-step programs. These programs offer alcoholics and addicts a way to get clean and help others get clean at no cost to the individual or taxpayer. Unfortunately, there are two things that the government does not like. First, these are programs of spirituality. They require the addict to “turn their will and lives over to the care of God”. Second, as I explained, this does not require big government intervention. These programs deliver miracles; I know that for a fact. I know people who have been through them and care about them.

As I wrap up, I just want to say that there are so many areas that we need to be working on in this House to improve our criminal justice system. Bill C-9 is a good step forward. We need to make sure that our judges are independent and that they are worthy of the positions they hold.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise here today to speak to this piece of legislation.

In my riding of Kelowna—Lake Country, the impacts of crime and increasing crime rates are things that I have heard more and more about from my constituents. According to a release from Statistics Canada earlier this year, the Kelowna census metropolitan area, the CMA, now has the highest crime rate in Canada, with 27,147 Criminal Code violations in the region in the 2021 report.

While the crime severity index, the CSI, is 73.7 across Canada, according to Statistics Canada, in the Kelowna CMA, it is significantly higher, at 122.3 in our region. It is the topic of discussion I hear from constituents in meetings, through emails, at coffee shops and on the streets, and it was one of the most important issues discussed during our municipal election, which just ended a few weeks ago, with different solutions discussed on how to best solve the issue.

One of the problems that arises from this is the revolving door we see in our criminal justice system. Unfortunately, too often we see individuals go through a catch-and-release system, where they do not serve their time and also do not receive the help they need to help reduce the chances of them reoffending, including addiction or mental health treatment. These are all areas where we need to see improvement in our system, on top of Bill C-9.

Unfortunately, in the conversations I have had in my community, there needs to be improvement in public confidence in our justice system and there has not been much evidence that the Liberal government has helped to uphold this. This is yet again another example of a bill which could have been in place almost a year ago if it were not for the Liberal government's decision to hold an unnecessary snap election last fall.

The previous iteration of this bill was Bill S-5 from the 43rd Parliament. It would have been debated, studied and perhaps adopted by now if all members of the House were to have moved it forward. Instead, here we are again, starting debate on this bill from the beginning, over a year since the last version was introduced, because of an unnecessary, costly election. Just as a reminder, ash was falling from the sky in my riding of Kelowna—Lake Country when the Prime Minister called the snap election.

There are many examples of legislation being worked on in the last Parliament, but due to the snap election, everything was cancelled and had to start over again. The committee I sit on is now looking at a Bill C-22, the Canada disability benefit act, which was also first introduced over a year ago and then died on the Order Paper because of the snap election last fall. Here is another example of how we really have to look at what the government's priorities are. A lot of its priorities are political rather than moving forward good legislation that we need in this country.

Conservatives are always happy to work for reforms in our judiciary. Public faith in our system is what guarantees our society's commitment to due process under law. No one spoke more eloquently on this than former Conservative leader Rona Ambrose when she introduced her final piece of legislation in 2017, the just act. That bill proposed judicial accountability through sexual assault law training.

As a strong voice for women and sexual assault survivors, Ms. Ambrose recognized that far too often our justice system fails to respect the experiences of victims of sexual assault. Sexual assault survivors need to know that those hearing their cases have the training, background and context to give them a fair trial and better ensure that sexual assault survivors do not hesitate to come forward. We, unfortunately, still need a judicial system that we can trust and that will be fair, a system that really focuses on victims.

More work needs to be done to ensure judges understand the laws surrounding this consent. More tools need to be provided to judges to provide fair, compassionate sentences that will see offenders rehabilitated.

My own private member's bill legislation, Bill C-283, would provide such a tool in reforming the sentencing process for offenders suffering from drug addiction and mental health challenges. My legislation would amend the Criminal Code of Canada to support a two-stream sentencing process. While both would have the same sentence time, certain convicted individuals who demonstrate a pattern of problematic substance use and meet certain parameters at the time of sentencing could have the judge offer them the choice to be sentenced to participate in a mental health assessment and addiction treatment inside a federal penitentiary while they serve out their sentence.

Through this sentencing process, offenders would still receive meaningful consequences for their actions, but they would also receive curative treatment leading to a path of reducing the risk of reoffending. In other words, it would end the revolving door. I have actually called my private member's bill the “end the revolving door act”. My bill has the support of many stakeholders who work in addiction treatment and in the criminal justice system, and it also has support across some party lines in this place. I am thankful to say we had our first debate on it, and it will be coming forth again.

It is too important of an opportunity to miss out on, just like this bill we have here today. Some victims have said they have lost faith in the judicial system completely. It was not too long ago that victims, especially women, were blamed for sexual assault. Before laws were put into place improving the process, it was common for judges to factor in things such as the length of a woman's skirt or whether she had a past relationship with the perpetrator when determining if something was criminal. There needs to be more accountability in the judiciary. Legislation that involves our judicial system is really important.

Unfortunately, we know violent crime is up across Canada. It is up 32% since the government took office. One has to wonder how some of these soft-on-crime policies the government has can impact Canadians' faith in their justice system, as well as public safety.

We also need to remember the position of the federal ombudsman for victims of crime has repeatedly been left vacant by the government for many months at a time. Most recently, it was left vacant for almost a year. These are things that are really important when we are looking at our entire judicial system and how it functions, and we need to focus on these types of issues no only so the public has confidence, but also so the public is best served in all of these different areas. It is also really important that, at the core of everything, we keep victims in mind and that we are always standing up for the victims of crime, which is something the Conservatives absolutely do. It is always something we are considering and focusing on.

In closing, if the Liberal government really were concerned about the issue we are debating here today, Bill C-9, it would have not called a snap election last year. This would have been already in place. It is something that already would have been enacted.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

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

This is an important bill, and the Bloc Québécois will support it because it seems that some communities are seeing the rise of a kind of self-policing ecosystem. We must legislate in response.

A year or two ago, I moved a motion to establish an independent body to handle complaints in sport following complaints by female Swimming Canada team members. There have also been complaints by young athletes in Ontario and allegations of sexual violence.

Sport is a self-regulating system. Sometimes it works; sometimes it does not. I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on the importance of creating an independent body to handle complaints in the justice system as proposed in Bill C‑9.

[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?

[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, 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.