Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you as well to our witnesses for being here today.
Listening to the comments of our three witnesses today, my own conclusion is that we have a combination—I don't want to be unfair to all of them, for I'm thinking here primarily of Professor Mendes—of legitimate political and policy concerns, with which I will confess I don't happen to agree, and constitutional nonsense masquerading as scholarship.
Professor Mendes, you didn't provide a written text today, or if you did it wasn't translated to be passed out, at any rate, and I don't have your comments written down in front of me. But in your responses to some of the questions you reiterated a series of points in almost identical words to what you said when you were before the legal and constitutional affairs committee of the Senate, in which you proposed a preposterous nightmare scenario. And you should know better.
You had three rhetorical questions. You said:
What would happen the first time a prime minister refused to recommend appointment of a duly elected person under the so-called advisory election framework, if all the others had been appointed?
Second, you asked:
What would the Supreme Court of Canada say about such a refusal if they were ever asked to determine the constitutionality of this process?
Number three, you asked:
What if the court declared the whole process unconstitutional so that those who were appointed were in limbo as to whether they could continue sitting?
Then you went on to elaborate, as you did again, the notion that somehow legislation would be tossed aside; that we would not be in a constitutional crisis in a formal sense, but rather in a crisis in which we have no more rule of law.
This is patently ridiculous—everything you've said here. Let me go through the three rhetorical questions you asked but didn't answer.
What happens the first time a prime minister doesn't appoint a senator?