I have absolutely no doubt that there will be an indigenous judge on the Supreme Court of Canada—an outstanding indigenous judge who will not require any compromise in the standards that are applied. The pool of indigenous lawyers in Canada is still very small. When I was the first female Minister of Justice, of the members of the bar who were eligible for appointment to Superior Court, only 12.5% were women; 25% of my appointments were women. The minister has a very small pool of eligible indigenous lawyers who have been at the bar long enough to be appointed to superior courts. Five per cent of her appointments have been indigenous appointees.
We have talked about this, and our committee is very concerned about creating this body of people who can go to the Supreme Court. One of the members of our committee—Stephen Kakfwi—is an indigenous person himself, so we are very committed to doing this.
In addition, and not in substitute, we look among other, non-indigenous candidates for a familiarity and an understanding of the realities of our indigenous communities in Canada. That's an incredibly important thing.
I am absolutely confident. It's interesting that things are kept confidential and you can't talk about them, but I have no doubt that this will happen, maybe in the next couple of rounds. It just depends on where we are and where the next appointments are. I see them coming, and I see them speaking French. They'll take their place with great dignity and respect, and Canadians will be very excited at the quality they'll bring to the court.