Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's quite amazing; we have people here today of seemingly divergent views, and yet all of them make complete sense—to me, anyway, although I might just be having an off day.
If we can have a moment of self-reflection here, I think it opens up a larger issue: we're not really studying the appointment of judicial officers here, we're having a political debate. Sometimes, perhaps unfairly, the opposition might say that the government is anti-judiciary, anti-judge. I'm sure they're not. I'm sure the lawyers—there are at least three of them over there—can't be anti-judicial, anti-judge.
Quite frankly, when the Attorney General gets on the floor of the House of Commons and says that the opposition—in this case, the Liberals—are anti-police, that's equally false. By my background as a practising lawyer for some 21 years, and as a former mayor, I can't be either anti-police or anti-judge. My late uncle was a provincial court judge in the city of Moncton, where occasionally there is serious crime. It's not Vancouver or Toronto, but—For 35 years he developed very close relationships with prosecutors, defence attorneys, and for sure, the police.
So that's where I come from. We all come from communities.
I guess where I'm going with this line of questioning, Mr. Chairman, is that we're here discussing who should be, as Mr. Trudell says, on the committees. We're here discussing process, as if somehow this is going to be a debate of principle and attitude. I think we may be wasting our time discussing the judicial appointment process, because the very presumption, by the government's enunciated policy of change, is that there's something wrong with our judiciary. But I'm not hearing that from the retired judge, from the police officers, or from the defence attorneys.
What is wrong with our judiciary that would lead the Prime Minister to announce a statement that would divide the parties, that you're either pro-police or anti-police? It's pure politics.
I don't expect you people to comment on the politics. We're making a fine enough mess of that up here on both sides. We don't need your expertise on that. I guess I would ask each person, starting with the retired judge, what is so wrong with the level of the Canadian judiciary that we have to have these fairly large changes to the process? What is so wrong with our judiciary that the Prime Minister had to make this change?
Judge.