Yes, thanks, I'd like that very much.
I'd like to address the last point raised by Mr. Ménard, the alleged reason given by the government for abolishing the highly recommended. I find it quite unpersuasive. It may be perfectly true that different committees apply different criteria in determining what is recommended or highly recommended, but if that's true, that must apply equally to the committee's assessment that the person is acceptable.
It seems to me that at that point, the whole process of assessing candidates falls apart. That surely is another reason why we need both legislation and some mechanism to evaluate the performance of the committees themselves. But this can't be done unless you have at least a minimal degree of transparency about the operations of the committees as well as the operations of the government. At the moment we have neither, as I tried to emphasize in my written submission.
Allow me also to make a small correction. I hope I didn't throw any aspersions on members of the committee. That was not my intention, and I don't think I did. I want to make it very clear for the record that the issue is not the good faith of the members of the committee; I accept that wholeheartedly. My complaints were that the terms of reference of the committee were much more circumscribed. In particular, the committee did not in fact make recommendations, they only screened the candidates, and there's a huge difference between the two.
Allow me also to make some comments on the much-discussed issue of whether or not police officers should be included. I think it's a huge red herring. As my colleague Professor Russell pointed out in the course of his evidence, at best only about 2% of Superior Court judges are ever involved in criminal cases. So I don't know what the fuss is about.
Even if the percentage were higher, how could a police officer, or for that matter anyone, possibly go about determining whether or not an applicant for office is going to be tough in dealing with anything? He never sees the candidates—one of the many problems we have. Are we going to add a question to the questionnaire asking whether this guy, if he's appointed, will be sufficiently tough? What if the guy has never had a criminal case in his lifetime? Then the whole thing falls apart.
So I think it's completely a red herring. I very much hope that the committee, in addressing the issue, will bear this in mind. As the Chief Justice rightly points out, it raises anew the whole question of the function, the purpose, and the effectiveness of having a so-called police representative on the committee, given all the factors that have been raised.
Thank you very much.