Thank you.
Coming from the west and being less than even unilingual, because English is not my first language and I don't know French, I have some sympathy for what Mr. Rathgeber just said. But I can also tell you as a member of the bar in British Columbia, having practised there for many years, that working through interpreters is less than satisfactory. My clients, either as witnesses or litigants or accused, were at the receiving end of some unfairness because sometimes the interpreters didn't do a proper job and the judge didn't get the full story. When you challenged it, the judge thought you were simply quibbling because you weren't getting your point of view in the mind of the judge.
With respect to your proposal, I wonder whether that proposal would not give the government of the day an option to appoint judges who were less than absolutely proficiently bilingual, because they would know that there is an opportunity to have somebody not on the panel if the person doesn't understand the language of the litigant. Would it not lead to a diminution of the objective of this amendment?
The purpose of this amendment is to have absolutely fluently bilingual people appointed to the court. If there is an opportunity for some judges to not sit on a particular case, then that requirement could be eased or somewhat ignored at some times in our future history.