Thank you.
I want to congratulate my great colleague, my neighbour.
I want to put forward a motion, so we can get back to work here. I move:
That pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(h)(vii), the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, in light of recent media reports of inappropriate partisan consultations over judicial appointments, invite key actors named in those reports, including, but not limited to PMO senior advisor Mathieu Bouchard, to testify before this committee to account for these serious allegations.
This motion is very similar to the one put forward by my colleague from the Bloc Québécois on this issue. It is very important that this committee study the possibility of partisan interference in judicial appointments. It's unacceptable.
I was very shocked, Madam Chair, when I saw this.
The question is this. Is this within the purview of the ethics committee? Well, when you're dealing with partisan issues and potential partisan interference, that becomes the role of the ethics committee, because our role is to ensure that public office holders reach a certain standard of serving the public and not just partisan interest.
This is very much within the purview of our committee, because we are not looking generally at how judges are nominated, and we're not looking at other issues of the judiciary. We're looking only at whether or not a partisan lens was used on the nomination of judges, and whether people who had no right to participate or to give advice because of their partisan role were part of this process.
I would move this forward for debate.