Thank you, Chief Justice. I have read about your career and your sense of humour and your accomplishments in the legal field. I'm very impressed.
I am from New Brunswick. The eastern part of Canada has a different sort of criminal mindset, for sure, and what we are discovering in this tour around the country is that there are different problems in different locations. But there are some constants, and one thing that we grapple with and that divides us sometimes is the usage of judicial discretion. Some offer solutions, as legislators, to legislate and to bring in mandatory minimums or very strict directions to judges of the first instance as a way of helping situations of leniency, increasing deterrence, and generally making the criminal element be more regulated.
I would be interested in your perspective on whether there has been too much judicial discretion. We had witnesses this morning from the police community who suggested that the system is not working in part because judges are not paying sufficient heed to evidence in bail hearings, show cause hearings. I know that as a chief justice you may not be in the provincial courts of first instance that much, but the mistakes generally trickle up to where you were for so many years.
It's a general question. As I say, I'm a big believer in judicial discretion, but as with apples, there are some judges who don't get it right. Presumably courts of appeal and Canadian Judicial Council hearings help with that.
The other aspect I'll ask you about is along the same lines. There have been suggestions at this committee, and I have been here for four years, about judges being totally unaccountable. We don't get to interview many of them. The idea is that there is the Canadian Judicial Council and there are the criminal courts to take care of judges, but that you are not as accountable as a group as we are, let's say, because every so often we have to knock on doors and be rejected or not. In some cases, if you don't go door to door, you do better, but....
Do you think judges are accountable enough, and do you think judicial discretion is way overboard?