I just wanted to make sure there wasn't any aspect I was missing in some of the other comments I made. I just wanted to check that with the deputy minister. He may have some additional comments.
Again, I think the point is made--there has been one request in 10 years for this independent body to provide pertinent advice to the Government of Canada. In all other respects, the Law Commission simply went its own way.
Who determined what they were going to do? It wasn't the government, and it wasn't necessarily governmental priorities with the Liberals. I'm certain the former ministers of justice went to the Department of Justice in 99.9% of all the work they had done to get independent legal advice. That's where they got their independent legal advice. That's where they got their ideas on law reform. Quite frankly, I'm confident that the Department of Justice, at least in most respects, can provide that independent legal analysis, so I'm very comfortable relying on in-house lawyers to do that.
There are other cases, and I mentioned the Rothstein appointment process, in which we felt we should bring in additional outside eminent counsel to advise not only Justice Rothstein, as I indicated, but also the committee. I remember sitting in the chair position; I think it was even in this room. The experts told us what they felt the constitutional limits and the constitutional proprieties were of that kind of process. We didn't go to the Law Commission of Canada to hire those experts, yet we understood that if there wasn't a credible process, the entire institution of the Supreme Court of Canada could be discredited by that kind of a process.
Is there an ability to obtain good independent legal advice on a continuing basis, whether it's from justice department lawyers, or those who are hired by the Department of Justice, or existing organizations--including provincial law reform commissions--or universities, or university professors? Those individuals are in no way bound to agree with government positions. They have the ability to comment on any piece of legislation, as they often do.