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.

Business of the House

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

Mr. Speaker, I will start by echoing the comments of thanks by the opposition House leader. To all those who serve the House and for everything they have done, particularly over the last year, I offer our deep and sincere thanks. The opposition House leader rightfully named all those we rely on to do the jobs on a day-to-day basis that we do in serving Canadians.

We will continue with the second reading debate of Bill C-9 concerning the Judges Act this afternoon. Tomorrow, it is our intention to call Bill C-11 on online streaming at report stage.

On Monday, we will be returning to the second reading debate of Bill C-21 respecting firearms. In the afternoon, we will go back to Bill C-11 for debate at third reading. We will also focus on finding a way to expedite the bill currently on notice concerning the self-induced extreme intoxication defence standing in the name of the Minister of Justice.

Finally, we have had discussions among the parties, and if you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent to adopt the following motion:

That, notwithstanding the order adopted by the House on Thursday, November 25, 2021, with regard to the participation in the proceedings of the House and its committees, the provisions related to the COVID-19 vaccination be suspended beginning on Monday, June 20, 2022.

Justice

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Mr. Speaker, six years ago, in 2016, the government conducted consultations on reforming the judicial complaints process. After inexcusable delays, we are finally starting to debate Bill C-9, which has the potential to increase confidence in the judicial system. This is long overdue.

This bill would replace the process through which the conduct of federally appointed judges is reviewed by the Canadian Judicial Council and would enable a judge to be removed from office for reasons including infirmity, misconduct or failure in the due execution of judicial office. By modifying the existing judicial review process, a straightforward process for complaints serious enough to warrant removal from office would be established.

Our justice system needed this piece of legislation to be implemented years ago. Canadians must be assured that our judges need to be held accountable and perform their duty in the best interests of our society and our country. I urge all members in the House to support this bill.

Judges Act

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question, but I am reflecting more on some of the other comments the member made reference to. He talked about Liberals being soft on crime. Not that long ago, on Wellington Street, which was open at the time and has not opened since, a rally took place that shut down downtown Ottawa due to all the activities that were taking place. The Conservative Party of Canada members, like the member for Carleton, were doing very little, if anything, and maybe even encouraging the occupation to continue. On the other hand, they say we are the ones who are soft on crime. That is a side issue that I wanted to throw in.

Bill C-9 is the reason I started by quoting the chief justice, who recognizes that there is a need for us to change the system. They are very much following the legislation. This is not something that was done overnight. It has taken a while. We believe we got it right, and that is why I say we should send it to committee if there need to be some changes. It would reinforce public confidence, which is what the member is getting at in his question. We want to reinforce public confidence in our judicial system because unfortunately, at times and in a limited number of cases, a judge will say the wrong thing and it is likely because something inside needs to be changed, maybe through an educational program or something of that nature.

We have recognized it in the past. Let us recognize it today and see if we can get the legislation passed.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North mentioned a few times the disconnect between what we see the Conservatives do and what we hear the Conservatives talk about. These are things like being soft on crime, when the Conservatives are supporting illegal blockades and the Liberal Party is working to bring in better law enforcement.

We have gone a long way since the patronage appointments of Stephen Harper. I am thinking of Vic Toews: Less than a year out of cabinet, he was appointed to the Court of Queen's Bench in Manitoba by Stephen Harper. Now, we are doing an independent review of appointments of judges.

Could the member comment on how far we have moved things along to restore the public trust in our judicial system, and how Bill C-9 will help us to go even further?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the problem with the House of Commons is there is never enough time to have the types of debates that we would like to have on everything that comes before us. That is why we often have to sit beyond our normal sitting hours.

The Government of Canada has a legislative agenda. It also has budgetary measures. When we put them together and look at the priorities of the government, whether it is the pandemic or inflation, as we are all concerned about, all of these public policy issues continue to move forward, led by the Prime Minister and the cabinet.

At the end of the day, a well-functioning government has the ability to deal with a wide variety of issues, always keeping our focus on the issues that are most important to Canadians. It does not necessarily mean that we just let Bill C-9 go nowhere. It is an important piece of legislation. We have been provided this opportunity to bring in Bill C-9 because of a collapse in debate last night.

We have not lost any focus on what the important issues are for Canadians in particular, whether it is the pandemic, the war in Europe or inflation, which are all matters of great concern.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to address the House virtually today.

There are a number of thoughts that I would like to share with respect to this piece of legislation. It is legislation that has been in the works for a considerable amount of time. As much as I have been enjoying some of the questions and answers, especially when the Conservatives are being pushed as to when they are going to look at it or whether they would consider the passage of the legislation. Just given the context of what the official opposition members are saying, I do not anticipate that the bill will be passing before summer. I think the Conservatives have some spin notes that they want to try to leave on this particular legislation.

The biggest one that comes to my mind is the issue of “soft on crime”. It is especially members of the Conservative hard-right element who like to say that they are much harder on crime, that government needs to be tough on crime and that if it is not a Conservative government, it is soft on crime. Whether it makes sense or not, that is the line that the Conservatives like to give because of public perception.

That said, the bill will pass when it will pass, ultimately. I am hopeful that, as we can sense, the majority of the House see the value in Bill C-9, because it is something that is needed.

I want to start by making a couple of observations from some of the stakeholders. I want to do that this time around because I really do respect our judicial system as one of the fundamental pillars of our democracy. Our rule of law, our judicial system and the idea of independence are held dear by, I would like to think, all members of the House.

For that reason, I thought it was important to start off with a quote. It is from the Right Hon. Richard Wagner, Chief Justice of Canada and chairperson of the Canadian Judicial Council. He stated:

Over the past few years, the Council has consistently called for new legislation to be tabled in order to improve the process by which concerns about judicial conduct are reviewed. The efforts of members of Council to develop proposals in this regard have been fruitful, and we appreciate the openness with which the Minister of Justice has engaged the Council in his consultations.

I will go to another quote from the Canadian Judicial Council. It states:

While the Council will take some time to carefully review the proposed amendments, we are confident that these reforms will bring about much needed efficiency and transparency to the judicial conduct review process.

I wanted to start with those opening quotes because of the respect that I have for judicial independence. I also recognize that there has been a great deal of work, whether by the minister or by administration or by civil servants. They have worked very closely with the many different stakeholders while at the same time respecting the importance of judicial independence. That is why, when I look at the legislation—and I concur with some of the comments being made by my New Democratic Party colleagues and Green Party members, who seem to support the legislation and its speedy passage—I would like to think that the bill itself should not be controversial. It is actually fairly straightforward. There will be other opportunities for the opposition members to try to score their political points, if I could put it that way.

I do think there would have been a great deal of value in seeing Bill C-9 at least pass through second reading so that it could go to committee stage, possibly during the summer, when feedback could be heard from the public and experts, with the idea of coming back in the fall for report stage and third reading.

The Conservative members who spoke before me were interesting. I picked up on two comments; one was the issue of “soft on crime”, which I have already referenced and maybe will go into a little more later, but they also brought up the issue of appointments of judges. I was somewhat taken aback by some of the comments that were put on the record.

We were being criticized because we did not make appointments shortly after being elected into government, as we were reviewing and establishing a more independent, apolitical, transparent appointment process to ensure that our judicial system would be that much more transparent. Yes, there might have been some delays in those appointments, but they were taking the extreme position that murderers went free because of some delays in appointments. I would welcome and challenge the Conservative members to cite specific examples of someone who not only allegedly murdered but did murder an individual and ultimately, because they could not get a day in court, were let go without any charges being laid in that situation. I would be very much interested in a name. If they could provide me with one, they can always send it to my P9 email or raise it inside the House.

The member went on to talk about Jody Wilson-Raybould, being very critical of her for not making appointments and implying in the comments that she would only make an appointment if the person donated to the party. Again, those were very extreme statements being made by the Conservative Party. It is not fair. It is interesting how they seem to have forgiven the past—at least, most of the Conservative caucus has—in regard to Jody Wilson-Raybould, but I remember the allegations a number of years ago on that front.

It is important to look at the appointments that have actually been made. The government has made somewhere in the neighbourhood of 400 appointments since 2016. If we do the comparison, I would love to hear the numbers from the previous administration. When it comes to this administration, out of the hundreds of appointments to our judicial system, 55% have been women. I would love to hear a comparison with the previous 10 years under Stephen Harper.

About 3% of our appointments, or marginally just above that, were indigenous. That is important to recognize. Over 10% are visible minorities. The LGBTQ2 appointments are over 5%. Not only are we identifying ideal, competent, incredible individuals, but as a result of a more transparent, depoliticized appointment process, I believe that overall the appointments are more effective in better reflecting what our society looks like today.

On both of those points, whether it is judges and the appointment of judges or the issue of the Conservatives being soft on crime and saying the government is not tough enough on crime, I would challenge the Conservatives to prove their points, not necessarily on this legislation, but on other pieces of legislation so we can ultimately see Bill C-9 pass.

It is important to recognize that we do need to see a balance. We have the fundamental pillar of our judicial independence and it is important there be a high level of confidence held by the public in the administration of justice. I believe the legislation we are looking at deals with that in a very fair fashion.

The amendments will ultimately allow for the Canadian Judicial Council to continue to preside over the process proposed in the legislation. This would start with a three-person review panel ultimately deciding to investigate a complaint of misconduct. In some situations, if the complaint is serious enough, it might even warrant dismissal or removal from the bench. In situations like that, it could be referred to a separate five-person panel.

In the first case, it would be strictly a three-person review panel made up of CJC members. A judge and a layperson could impose sanctions such as public apologies and continuing education.

The current process has turned out, in many ways, to be exceptionally costly at times, and equally as important, it is not very timely. We have seen situations where it could take years before anything is actually concluded.

That is the reason our judicial system is saying that we need to make changes. Today, judges facing possible removal from office because of serious allegations of misconduct have several opportunities throughout the process to launch these judicial reviews. However, as I indicated, the process in some cases can be too long and can be at a fairly significant cost.

Replacing the process through which the Canadian Judicial Council reviews the conduct of a federally appointed judge is the essence of what the legislation is proposing to do. 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 by the Minister of Justice.

The new process would allow for the imposition of sanctions for misconduct which, while not serious enough to warrant removal, may warrant sanctions that are quite different. The current process does not allow for such sanctions. The member for Mount Royal highlighted some examples. Where a judge's actions have been deemed to have offended something and there needs to be a consequence for the actions, there are more opportunities for different types of consequences.

We could see anything ranging from verbal warnings to written warnings, to suspensions or public apologies. We could even see additional training being required, and ultimately, of course, judges being released. This legislation enables a suite of actions that could be imposed on a judge, given a certain behaviour or comment that is made publicly.

Not only have we heard today, but we have also heard it in the past. We have had private members' bills. I think of Rona Ambrose. She talked about educating judges, particularly in the area of rape victims. Her piece of legislation ultimately received support from all areas of the House. Parliamentarians from all political stripes recognized the need to have some form of educational programming for newly appointed judges to take things into consideration. In fact, my daughter, who is a local representative in the province of Manitoba, had also taken that particular initiative after hearing about what Rona Ambrose had done.

Ultimately, the government pushed that legislation through in the years that followed after Ms. Ambrose left the House of Commons, but we attribute it to Rona and we attribute it to the fact that there is a universal desire for that training.

It was not that long ago when we had another private member's bill, one from one of my colleagues from Montreal. There was a great deal of effort by members on all sides of the House to see that legislation, Bill C-233, which is still before the House today, pass second reading and go to committee. It came out of third reading because of that desire.

For those who are not familiar, Ms. Ambrose's piece of legislation is recognized as Keira's law for good reason. I will quote from an article, “When I brought forward the evidence about abuse of Mr. Brown, we had a judge, for example, who said that domestic violence is not relevant to parenting and, 'I'm going to ignore it.'”

Periodically statements come out of our judicial system that call into question the public confidence. That is one of the reasons it is so important that we pass this legislation. It recognizes that our independent judicial system and our judges, who we do need to respect, can make mistakes. Obviously, a vast majority of judgments are done in a way in which they meet the expectations of Canadians, but on occasion, when that does not happen, there needs to be a more effective mechanism to ensure there is an appropriate consequence. This legislation would enable some variation of consequences for judges, at times, who cross the line.

I have appreciated the opportunity to share a few thoughts and will be more than happy to answer any questions.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to continue with the theme of what we have been hearing about this piece of legislation, Bill C-9. There seems to be broad support for it. It seems to be something that would be a good step forward at least. Everybody agrees on that.

It has had a tortured history. I would say the government has been rather inept at bringing this measure forward, but now that it is here before us and we are facing the end of the parliamentary session at the end of the month, I am wondering if the member would comment on the possibility of moving this bill forward quickly, perhaps even with unanimous consent, so that we could get on to some of the more important issues facing us here.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I join with my colleagues in discussing Bill C-9 today. I am appreciative of the bill and the fact that it would grant the premise that we have been advocating for a very long time, and that Liberals have been arguing against for a very long time, that judges need to be held accountable. There needs to be a remedy for egregious actions on the part of judges.

I believe in the fallen nature of man and that the dividing line between good and evil runs through the heart of a person. I do not think anybody is above doing wrong or evil things, and we must all fight against that all the time. That stands for everybody, including judges. Judges can get it wrong and sometimes do evil things. Those things happen in the fallen world we live in. For that reason, there need to be accountability mechanisms for all individuals.

Accountability is baked into many of the things we do. It is baked into democracy and there are the checks and balances of democracy. In this place, we have one of the most obvious checks and balances, which is the vote when it comes to getting re-elected or being elected. We run on our record and on what we plan to do, and that is an accountability mechanism. That is being accountable to the people back home.

There are other checks and balances in our system. We have the Constitution, and all the laws we bring in this place must be checked against our Constitution, making sure that individual freedoms and liberties are maintained. We have provincial jurisdiction and federal jurisdiction, and both of those are guarded jealously. That is one of the checks and balances in our system. Then we have a thing called judicial independence, where politicians and the political sphere are not supposed to influence judges, so to speak. However, every now and then judges will have personal failures, where whatever they have done is beyond the pale of public activity and they would be deemed unfit to be judges any longer. This bill puts out a mechanism in order to deal with that.

I will read some of the reasons for removal that this bill lays out: “(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.” I think this is a fair bill, and it would put in place a due process for the removal of judges from their position.

As I said earlier, I am appreciative of this bill because it grants the premise that judges need to be held accountable. I do not know about others, but where I come from there is a growing dissatisfaction or mistrust, or “lack of confidence” is probably the best term, for folks back home around the judicial system and holding criminals to account. We are starting to see this spill over into urban areas, where criminals operate with impunity. They steal things in broad daylight and commit acts of violence in broad daylight, disobeying the law in general and violating local communities. In rural Canada, theft is a real challenge, and it is somewhat a crime of opportunity. Where I live, the police getting to my door is a matter of perhaps hours, so criminals can do their criminal activity and be long gone before the police show up.

While I think this bill is an important starting piece, there is an entire sentiment that the current Liberal government drives, which starts perhaps with its tacit support of the “Defund the Police” movement, but also this general idea that the justice system will allow people to get out of jail more easily and will not penalize people. These kinds of things, which we often hear from the government, have led to the police not being able to make arrests, and when they do make arrests they are not able to get convictions, which becomes a major challenge. It demoralizes the police, the lack of political support from movements like “Defund the Police”. It undermines the political support police think they have.

They know that if they are going to pursue criminals, they need to have public support for their actions, and we are seeing more and more the police telling folks that they probably will not get a conviction or that they will have to go through all that effort and the criminal would be back out in six months. If what is missing from the victim's place is a small thing, they are not going to put the resources toward that, because they have a major case they are working on and they are diverting the resources to that, as they are likely to get a conviction there. Individuals' lives are devastated. When people come home to find that their fridge, washing machine and dishwasher are missing, that basically all of the appliances in their house have been stolen, it is a violating thing. To have somebody come into their house and steal things like that is unnerving. Perhaps it is not a great monetary loss, but it is extremely disconcerting for the folks who are missing those things.

Pollsters will track this kind of thing, the trust in our institutions, and generally Canadians' trust has been going down over the last seven years. We saw that under Conservative governments, trust in institutions, trust that institutions were doing what people expected them to do, was going up. Now we have seen a dramatic decrease in the trust in institutions, which bears itself out in two ways. One is that now people do not even call the police when their stuff goes missing. I hear that over and over again. People say that the police cannot do anything about it and therefore they do not even call. The other side of the coin is that criminals operate with increasingly brazen activity. We saw it in Calgary recently: two cars blazing down the road, shooting at each other while driving down the road, with no apparent fear that the police would show up, apprehend them and put an end to this firefight. It ended in the tragic death of a mother of five. That was in Calgary, just recently.

Folks will now come into rural yards and start stealing things. When the homeowner shows up and asks what they are doing, they say they are stealing things. He says, “I am standing right here”, and they just say, “What are you going to do about it?” We have that increasingly. We have just brazen activity by criminals because they see the lack of the system's ability to hold them to account, and therefore operate with complete impunity and brazenness that we have never seen before.

I would say that in my own life, I have witnessed the deterioration of trust in the community, trust in general. When I was growing up in my community, no one had a chain-link fence, no one had a gate at the end of the driveway, but these sorts of things are more and more common.

I lay this at the feet of the current government and the fact that it does not take this seriously. It does not provide the political support and tacitly supports movements like “Defund the Police”, which undermines our way of life, our quality of life and our ability to live peacefully in this country, and has led to a deterioration of the interactions we have as a society.

I look forward to questions on this.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the reality is that the bill that Rona Ambrose brought forward had training as the main measure, training so that judges would understand sexual assault.

With Bill C-9, we actually have a plethora of things that can be done to match the severity of the situation, whether it was an idle comment or a photograph that was taken prior to the sentence being made public. I think there is enough flexibility in this bill, and that is always going to be better. We do not want someone to be fired on a first offence, but we want to make sure there are a suite of actions that can be taken so that the punishment essentially fits the crime.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Peace River—Westlock.

It is a pleasure to rise to speak to Bill C-9, which is an act that would create a complaint mechanism for judges. We have certainly heard from all sides today that everyone thinks this is a great idea. This is not to say judges do not do a good job, because we know we have great judges in this country who work hard, but as with any career discipline, there is always the odd thing going on that is not good.

I remember when I was the chair of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women we talked about some of the things that were happening. In one sexual assault case, a judge actually asked the complainant, “Why couldn’t you just keep your knees together?” In another sexual assault case, another judge said, “she was drunk” in the taxi.

Rona Ambrose brought forward Bill C-337 to try to get at this issue of judges who do not have experience in sexual assault presiding over those cases. Although that bill unfortunately did not make it through under her private member's bill, the government brought it back, and we passed it earlier in the session. This would offer judges training, and in fact, it would offer lawyers who want to be judges training as well. That is the kind of remedy we want to see.

I was very pleased to hear the member for Mount Royal, who just spoke, talk about what this bill would allow. Other than just the extreme option of getting rid of a judge for whatever behaviour was complained about, there is a whole realm of possibilities, including verbal warnings, letter warnings, public apologies, training and multiple other options. This is something very good about this bill.

I do have a concern about the state of judges in our country since the Liberal government was elected. I started in 2015, and at that time we were missing I think 60 judges who needed to be appointed. Because of that, and because the Jordan decision, there were numerous examples of murderers and rapists who went free because there were not enough judges to handle the workload in a timely fashion.

There was an attempt made to put in a process. The government wanted to increase the diversity of the judges being selected, which is great, because one of the things that will make for a healthier democracy and rule of law is to have diverse thought and diverse representation of the population.

Unfortunately, what happened is the government used the Liberal fundraising database to figure out which judges should be picked from the lawyer pool. There were also fundraisers going on with the minister of justice at the time, which caused a big scandal because lawyers were paying $500 to meet her, and they all wanted to become judges. We know that is certainly not in keeping with conflict of interest rules in the House. The scandal went on for quite a while.

It is important to have diversity of thought with judges so they can check one another. If people are all in a group and they think together, it can be a bad thing. We have seen some of the Supreme Court decisions that came out recently that have caused concern across the country, such as the one that says, if a person is intoxicated, it could be a defence for murder, sexual assault, etc. Canadians in general would reject that and say no. The person is the one who chose to keep drinking or doing drugs until they became that intoxicated, and there needs to be an ownership of the behaviour. Those judges all together did not have enough diversity of thought for somebody to say that decision might not be a good thing.

I would suggest, from a Conservative perspective, that when somebody has killed multiple people, consecutive sentencing gave a lot of comfort to victims. The Supreme Court decision on that is another example. Parliament has a duty to review those decisions and have the discussions about whether that is really where we want to go on those topics. The whole purpose of having judges is that they are the executors of the rule of law in our nation.

I am very concerned that, in the last seven years, we are not seeing more rule of law. We are seeing more people committing crimes. The crime rates are increasing, including gun crime and violent crime. However, when I look at the response from the government, it looks like we are seeing a continual erosion of the rule of law.

The member who spoke previously mentioned that I am the first female engineer in the House, and we have an expression in the engineering world about a frog in a pot. Gradually the temperature in the pot increases until eventually we boil the frog, but the frog is not able to sense that the temperature is going up because it is so incremental. I would argue, with respect to the rule of law in Canada, the temperature is going up.

We had Bill C-75, which reduced the sentencing to fines or less than two years of time in jail for crimes such as abduction of a person under the age of 16, abduction of a person under the age of 14, arson for fraudulent purposes, marriage under 16 and participation in the activity of a terrorist group. There are a number of offences there, and I did not see the justification for that. We have heard from police chiefs that, although in some cases they agreed, in many cases there are serious crimes happening that now have only a slap on the wrist, which is not sending the right message about the rule of law and the importance of it.

In this parliamentary session, we now have Bill C-5 coming forward, which would remove mandatory minimums on robbery with a firearm; extortion with a firearm; discharging a firearm with intent; using a firearm in the commission of offences; trafficking or possession for the purpose of trafficking; importing, exporting, or possession of serious drugs; and production of these serious drugs, which are killing thousands of Canadians. Also, Bill C-5 would allow some of these sentences to be put down to house arrest, including that of sexual assault.

Somebody could victimize someone in their community and then serve the time there. I do not think that is something that we should leave to the discretion of judges, when we have seen in the past a judge ask, “couldn't you just keep your knees together?” There is a naivete if we think we can leave it to chance. Yes, in the majority of cases, judges will judge with wisdom, but it is the every now and again that we want to prevent and what our laws should prevent.

Abduction of a person under 14 could become a house arrest sentence. This is unbelievable. We have a huge human trafficking issue in this country, and this not only sends the wrong message, but it is also not going to fix things because, when people are left with a potential house arrest, those who are committing crimes can commit them out of their house. It is the same thing for someone trafficking drugs who gets house arrest. How convenient is that for people to stop by and pick up drugs?

These things make no sense to me, and so I am very concerned when I look at the erosion of our rule of law. At the same time, there is an erosion of protection for victims. We had Bill C-28 in the previous Parliament on victim surcharge. It used to be that there was some recompense made for victims who had suffered and had to travel distances to go to parole hearings and that kind of thing, but that was taken away.

This is a soft-on-crime government, and while I support Bill C-9 because when judges do not get it right we need to fix that, but I am very concerned that we are having this continual erosion of the rule of law. We have heard many speeches in the House that have said that there is a high rate of reoffending. People are committing crimes, getting out, committing them again and being put back in, and there really is no rehabilitation happening. That is not to say that there should not be, but the situation today is that there is not. If we know that people are going to reoffend and go out on the street, we have to protect the public, and we have a duty to do that.

The mechanism in the bill is to make sure that judges are doing their due diligence. We would have mechanisms, not just an extreme one, but progressions, that would allow us to take corrective action and manage the judicial system to ensure its integrity. This will preserve the rule of law, although the concerns I have expressed do remain.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to support Bill C-9, an act to amend the Judges Act.

This bill proposes to overhaul a process that is essential to maintaining public confidence in our justice system, namely the mechanisms used for examining allegations of judicial misconduct.

If there is one class of legislation that everyone in the House should be able to agree on unanimously, it is laws having to do with our justice system.

In the time I have been in the House, I have been really pleased to see the non-partisan ways that members have been able to work together on justice-related issues on many occasions. I am going to outline one that just happened last week.

My hon. colleague from St. Albert—Edmonton proposed a private member's bill to carve out an exception to allow jurors to speak to mental health professionals about what happened during the time they were in deliberations. Up until now, the Criminal Code has prohibited jurors from doing so, thus creating a problem where a juror who is profoundly affected by what happens in deliberations is unable to speak about it to somebody who can counsel them on their mental health.

At the justice committee, we heard from jurors. We put forward a package of recommendations in the 42nd Parliament related to how we should improve the lives of jurors. My colleague from St. Albert—Edmonton worked with a colleague in the Senate. They put this forward in both Houses and were able to secure the unanimous adoption of a bill that will profoundly change the life of jurors. That is the way we should do things in this House more frequently.

This bill is another excellent example of where there has been profound collegiality. There has been a lot of consultation and there is a general consensus that we should move forward. I echo the comments of my dear friend from Saanich—Gulf Islands that we should find a way to pass this before we have any type of summer break.

That being said, one of the things that I think is really important in this country is the respect for our institutions. We have wonderful federal judges who have been appointed in this country, people of great distinction in their field. When people go before the courts, they need to have confidence that the judges are impartial and fair and that judges have the ability to fairly adjudicate their case. This means we need a process that the public can trust for judges who are accused of misconduct.

There are things in this country we should not question. We should not be questioning the central bank. We should not be questioning the justice system. We should have profound confidence in these national institutions no matter our party or our political leanings. Therefore, it is up to us as parliamentarians to create laws that provide that confidence. This bill does that in three essential ways.

On the first point, I am going to use the example my friend from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke used earlier, of when a judge is photographed between the time the judge finishes judging a case and the opinion is published and there is a picture of the judge with a group of people who are a party to the case. That does not necessarily warrant that judge's removal from office for life and an act of both Houses of Parliament to remove the judge. Right now, there are no sanctions below removal that are available to the Canadian Judicial Council. This bill offers us alternatives such as training, an apology in public and other things a judge can do to excuse behaviour that does not rise to the level of warranting removal.

Second, we have seen a misuse of the system. There are judges who have been accused, but there have been very few because our judges are a very distinguished, excellent group of people. I do not want anything I say in this speech to be considered a slap in the face to the federal judiciary which is made up of excellent people. There are always some people who are alleged to have committed and do commit some misconduct. The idea that people can tie this up in knots for years and years with appeal after appeal until they are able to get their pension does not make any sense.

I am very pleased that we now have a process with a panel of three to five people to start, if the relationship is extremely troubling, and that its decision can be appealed directly to the Supreme Court of Canada. There will be no appeals to the Federal Court or the Federal Court of Appeal. The process will be much faster, and I believe that this is very important.

There is something else that is important, and that is transparency. At present, the Canadian Judicial Council is not required to prepare an annual report of all complaints submitted. It will now be required to disclose annually that it has received such complaints and to explain how they were addressed. That is also important for transparency.

I would also like to mention that there has been a lot of discussion in the House about the importance of the rights of victims. Let me say that when it comes to all parties and every parliamentarian, there is a profound respect for the rights of victims and the need for victims to feel they were fairly served by the justice system. It is very important to respect the rights of the criminal defendant, but it is also important to make sure victims are considered throughout the process.

This process that would be in place would be a faster process. This means people who were alleged to be victims of misconduct would have their final decision much faster than they would otherwise have had it. That also is important.

I am going to sort of make a clarion call. Especially at the end of the session, there is often a lot of partisanship and anger shown, but as a group, we can do so much good. I know this from experience, having worked with Conservative colleagues, like my friend from Sarnia—Lambton, and my colleagues in the NDP. I have worked often with the member for Edmonton Strathcona, as well as my friend from Saanich—Gulf Islands and members of the Bloc.

We all worked together to do constructive things. If we use the next week to pass bills we agree are constructive, I believe that we will accomplish a lot. I am therefore asking my colleagues in the House to work together to find a way to pass this bill before the end of June. I believe that it would be a great thing for Canadians.

This would allow us to show Canadians, who are discouraged when they see the acrimony floating around, that parliamentarians really can work together and accomplish things. I think that confidence in our national institutions is so important to restore.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the last member asked the question that was on my mind.

In the course of the debate this morning, I certainly heard the hon. member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke say out loud that we should get this bill passed quickly.

As we approach the end of a session, I do not know why we hold the whip over ourselves as though we do not get summer vacation and it would be so bad if we stayed and worked. That is something we are supposed to do, stay and work. Let us use the end of June momentum to suggest that Bill C-9 should get unanimous consent to pass it expeditiously this week.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on her speech, but I would like to come back to what my colleague from Saint-Jean and my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord said earlier.

One thing that is missing from Bill C‑9 is the judicial appointment process. Members will recall the uproar caused by the Liberal government's use of the infamous “Liberalist” database. I would like to know if my colleague agrees that it is time for a review of the judicial appointment process.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, as we approach the end of the parliamentary session, I want to take a moment to give thanks to my family, my staff, all of the people of Halifax West and all who have supported me and continue to support me in order to do my best in service.

I will be sharing my time today with the member for Mount Royal.

I am pleased to join my hon. colleagues today to speak in favour of Bill C-9, which proposes reforms to the current process for reviewing allegations of misconduct against federally appointed judges.

The role occupied by the judiciary in our system of government is unique. While one judge in the performance of their duties will interact with countless members of the public, the reverse is not true. Most individuals outside of the legal profession will have little direct exposure to judges in courtrooms in the course of their lives, yet for those individuals who do appear in court, that process is likely to be a major event in their lives. The behaviour of the judge handling their case will shape that person's impression of the justice system as a whole. For individuals who arrive in our courts seeking justice or facing serious jeopardy to their liberty, it is not an overstatement to say that the judge represents the personal embodiment of the values of integrity and impartiality that our justice system is trusted to uphold.

In addition, many people only ever see judges at a distance, in the context of significant or controversial issues. Canada has a high degree of respect for its judiciary and for the administration of justice overall, but it will require constant attention and effort to keep it that way.

Just as the impact of a judge’s behaviour on a particular individual can have great significance, so too can allegations of judicial misconduct have significant effects on public confidence and trust. Complaints against Canadian judges are rare, especially those severe enough to implicate potential removal from office. However, when they do occur, they capture public attention precisely because they diverge so radically from the norm. The public is entitled to see those allegations taken seriously and addressed through a process that itself reflects the best ideals of our justice system. Canadians need to know that the judicial system is fair to all, including the judiciary, and it is on this theme I wish to speak to members today.

Appropriate mechanisms for reviewing judicial conduct must be grounded in the constitutional realities of the judicial role. Judicial independence protects judges from outside influence of any kind, actual or perceived, in the exercise of their functions. This is absolutely critical to ensuring that the adjudication of cases is impartial and fair and is seen as such.

One form of influence against which judges are protected is the threat of personal reprimand or removal from their offices for conduct or decisions that may be contrary to the preferences of those in political power. For this reason, the Supreme Court of Canada has specified that the review of allegations related to judicial conduct, while vital to preserving public confidence in its own right, must be controlled and led by the judiciary itself. Moreover, the mechanisms for this review must allow opportunities for the judge in question to be fully and fairly heard.

Once a fair, judge-led process culminates in a recommendation on whether a judge should be removed from office, our great Constitution shifts the responsibility to us as parliamentarians to determine whether we will indeed remove the judge via an address to the Governor General. It is a testament to both the strength of our judiciary and the respect of this chamber for the sanctity of judicial independence that, to date, this power has never been exercised. It is a power that indeed must be reserved for circumstances of true necessity, when a judge refuses to leave office after it has been credibly established that their conduct threatens public confidence in the administration of justice.

To be sure that this power is exercised appropriately, Parliament must know that a judge-led review of the conduct of another judge was effective, impartial and thorough. This means ensuring the judge in question was treated with absolute fairness. This notion is at the very heart of the amendments we are debating today.

The current judicial conduct process, as set out in the Judges Act and operationalized by the Canadian Judicial Council, is in dire need of modernization and reform. The council has done what it can do to overhaul the process by making changes to its procedures, but much more is still needed, and that requires legislative amendments. As my colleagues have shared, a primary concern with the existing mechanism is its lack of efficiency, stemming from a rigid structure that is not easily adaptable to reviewing different types of judicial conduct. Associated with this are high costs in terms of money, time and detriment to the public trust.

Despite the intention of providing fairness to an impugned judge, the current regime can instead foster near endless litigation, as every facet of the inquiry process is susceptible to challenge through judicial review, compounded by appeals to multiple levels of court, often on grounds that have little merit or that bear on the public interest. My colleagues have referred to some of these examples, and I will not repeat them. It suffices to note that as matters linger unresolved for extended periods and at great cost, confidence in the administration of justice and the judiciary is undermined.

Procedural fairness, as accorded to judges, is necessary. Indeed, it is as equally important as the fairness that must be accorded to individuals in judges’ own courtrooms. However, procedural fairness can be satisfied in a way that does not enable adversarial zeal, calculated delay and resulting negative repercussions for Canadians. The Canadian Judicial Council itself has acknowledged that the status quo is at odds with the public interest. It is now for us as lawmakers to act.

Bill C-9 proposes a suite of reforms designed to overhaul the process for handling judicial conduct complaints. All have been carefully crafted to ensure that public confidence is enhanced, recognizing that this requires independence and efficiency, as well as a high degree of procedural fairness. Satisfying those complementary objectives will in turn foster greater trust in the administration of justice more broadly.

Bill C-9 would enhance the versatility of the judicial conduct process by providing a review panel to deal with less severe cases, that is, allegations of misconduct that are not so serious as to potentially warrant removal from office. This introduces responsiveness and nuance through options other than a full-scale hearing, sparing both judges and complainants from the strain of adversarial public hearings and the possible stigma of publicizing unverified allegations. A judge would nevertheless retain the right to be aware of all allegations, respond to them comprehensively and benefit from the advice and advocacy of skilled counsel.

Given the scrutiny and profile that public hearings necessarily entail, the need for fairness is especially important whenever it is required. Under the new process, allegations of misconduct so serious that removal from office may be warranted would be handled by a hearing panel comprising five members. It would include representatives of the judiciary, the legal profession and the public, and hearings would function in a manner akin to a trial. Prosecuting counsel would also be appointed, with the responsibility to present the case against the judge, much as a criminal prosecutor would do. The judge would be entitled to rigorous opportunities to call evidence and examine counsel. The process would ensure that the full rigour of an adversarial hearing, with the same clear court procedure, applies to all hearings.

I doubt anyone could reasonably claim that the processes I have described would fail to provide procedural fairness to a judge whose conduct has been called into question. They are not only fair but exhaustive and rigorous, designed to apply the rigour of our justice system to serious allegations while also allowing more humane and effective alternatives when allegations do not rise to a serious level. Most importantly, we as parliamentarians can be assured that should the day ever come when we need to consider a recommendation for judicial removal, we can have confidence that the recommendation stems from a scrupulous, fair and effective process.

With that, I look forward to questions from my colleagues.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley for his kind words on my role on the committee.

I just want to say, before I answer the question specifically, that the removal of criminal records for personal possession potentially affects 250,000 Canadians, so this would have a big impact. If we are worried about public safety, we need to make sure that those who have come in conflict with the law have every opportunity to reintegrate themselves into society, to support their families and to get things back on track. Bill C-5 would help do that.

With respect to Bill C-9, I have been frustrated, I would say, for almost five years now because we have not simply gotten this done. I think there is agreement, and like the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, I would recommend to House leaders that we find a way to move this bill forward very quickly.