We're talking about reprisals now. This tribunal deals with reprisals, not with the original complaint. The first complaint about the reprisal goes in front of a commissioner, who is not a judge and who has the authority to either not follow through on the investigation--I pointed out that provision--or not to bring proceedings. So it's not dealt with by a judge at all levels, but only when it gets to a certain level in the process.
When it gets to the tribunal, you'll recall that in my opening comments I said there were advantages to using a judge. The one I gave was the independence, the tenure.
My real comment was that care has to be taken to make sure that proposed section 21 is applied, that the process is expeditious and effective. And there are overly court-like procedures. That's not the bill. The bill says proposed section 21 should be informal and expeditious.
I simply caution you that there's a similar provision in the Competition Tribunal Act, that proceedings should be informal and expeditious but consistent with fairness.
I have done four contested merger cases in the Competition Tribunal. The longest one, by the time it got to the Supreme Court of Canada, took seven years. The shortest one, which didn't go past the tribunal, took a year and a half. So that's not an issue with judges; it's an issue of making sure that “informally and expeditiously” means just that.