I appreciate your being here with us, virtually, and certainly, as many others have said, I am very impressed with your impressive set of academic credentials and experience, much as I was with the other two candidates we had before us.
I am sure you are very dedicated to the task you have before you—somewhat before you and already somewhat behind you.
I am very firmly of the belief that the only people who should be making assessments and selecting senators should be the Canadian electorate, in elections. Of course, recognizing the constitutional situation that we have now, Alberta does have a senatorial selection process that has been used. We've held a few election processes under the Senatorial Selection Act in Alberta.
Two different Prime Ministers have chosen to appoint senators chosen through that process. Of course, the Chrétien and Martin Liberals chose to ignore the choices made by Albertans in those processes, but we have seen them appointed.
I know you can't speak as to your opinion on whether that is the appropriate way, or on choices that have been made by the government. You are speaking to the process that you are a part of. I am obviously disappointed when, on more than one occasion, we've heard the Minister of Democratic Institutions and her parliamentary secretary, when I asked this question in the House of Commons, indicate that they didn't really see merit to an election process. They felt that it should be a merit-based process and therefore somehow an election wasn't merit-based, which I find really troubling, to say the least.
This question was asked at the Senate committee. The minister was asked about Mr. Mike Shaikh, who would be the next person to be appointed should the election process that has taken place in Alberta be followed. The minister said that he was more than welcome to apply, just like anyone else, and that there was really no merit to the fact that 300,000-plus Albertans had chosen to select him to be their senator.
I wonder what your sense is, should you have to make recommendations in a future appointment where there has been a senatorial selection process, whether it be the one in Alberta or whether there is another province that chooses to set up such a process, and therefore people are in place who have been selected and chosen by the electorate in their provinces. I know you are bound by the process you are a part of and you can't comment, but you certainly can give an indication as to what you would do in terms of looking at the merit of those individuals, based on their having been chosen by the provinces they would represent in the Senate. How would you assess that as part of the merit when considering a candidate, if that were to be the case in future appointments?