Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for your presentations.
I have to say that as a lawyer I share your preoccupation about the changes that have been brought to the system of selection of judges, both on the side of the process and on the side of the composition of the actual committees. My concerns and those of my party are that with the changes that have been brought, we have actually stepped back in time in terms of ensuring the process, which has been developing for two decades now, of putting into place a system of nomination of judges at the federal level that was as independent, impartial, and transparent as possible so that, as the mores of society evolved and society demanded higher standards, it could bring in changes to meet those higher standards.
Mr. Russell, you talked about the work of the subcommittee of the previous committee of justice under the previous government, and the work that it was going towards, which would have in fact met higher standards.
With that as a base, I'd like to know from you, Mr. Giroux--because you talked about a code of ethics that was put into place in 2005, if I'm not mistaken, for the members--whether under that code of ethics a recent appointment to the JAC for Alberta, appointed in January 2007 by Minister Nicholson, named Gerald Chipeur, a Calgary lawyer....
My understanding is that he represented the Conservative Party just recently in the nomination challenge against member of Parliament Rob Anders; he registered as a lobbyist on February 20, 2007, to represent the Canadian Association of Police Boards for the creation of the centre to address Internet cybercrime; and he has registered to lobby Justice Canada, the PMO, MPs, the Senate of Canada, and a host of government departments like Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada, Foreign Affairs and International Trade, National Defence, and the RCMP.
Would your code of ethics allow for someone who is registered as a lobbyist and who represents the party that is the governing party to sit on a JAC?