The Official Languages Act was revised in 1988. When we read the debates from that time, we see that some members of Parliament, mainly from western Canada, were apprehensive. They were afraid that, if the Supreme Court judges were required to be bilingual, given the small number of judges on the court, that would prevent some candidates from being appointed. That was a concern at the time.
Times have changed. A number of years have passed and things have evolved. There is now a pool of bilingual judges in superior courts, appeal courts and the legal profession, basically the places from where the Supreme Court judges are recruited. This pool is much bigger than it was in 1988. So this concern may no longer be relevant today.