Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-106 today. I listened to my hon. friend from Vancouver Quadra make his presentation. I have the utmost respect for him. He is a man of much accomplishment in his career. He is certainly an academic and has contributed a lot to his profession and has many accomplishments.
I have one fear, though, as I listen to the hon. member, that the average Canadian is not getting a grasp or is not able to understand exactly what the member is saying. I want to bring this debate away from the level used by hon. member from Vancouver Quadra, a level which, no disrespect intended, was far above the average Canadian.
The hon. member talked about the people who should be involved in this commission. I will use some of his words and reflect on what he said. He said the law commission should be comprised of people in the law profession and people of high intellectual distinction.
Nowhere in his presentation has he indicated in any way that the opinions reflected by the minds of average Canadians should be represented in the commission. That has been the problem with the Minister of Justice's decisions and the government's bills in the two years I have been in the House. Nowhere in the bills introduced has there been any sense of realism between what is in the bill and what is on the mind of the average Canadian.
As parliamentarians we have a profound responsibility first and foremost to represent the concerns and the opinions of average Canadians. This recreation of the law commission is certainly far from that.
The predecessor to the law commission was abolished by the Tories in 1992. The Tory government was never known to be frugal but for some reason it found the commission a luxury it could not afford, which was a surprise considering its record of spending. It had grown as a quite natural progression into a large bureaucracy.
The Tory government in its wisdom decided it could get the same advice from outside sources at a better price. No doubt those outside sources were Tory advisers because the old line parties have a habit of rewarding their friends after they get into government. I have no doubt that this recreation of the law commission is another form of thanking Liberal friends for their participation in helping them get to government. We have seen this over and over again.
The law commission was established in 1971 to review Canadian federal laws and to make recommendations for the improvement or modernization of reforms within the justice system and develop new approaches that would be responsive to the changing needs of Canadian society.
In all honesty we have not seen a lot of evidence that the former law commission responded to the concerns of average Canadians. Its recommendations and work seemed to come out of some academic legal nirvana in which the recommendations were made on behalf of the people of Canada because, in all honesty, as the people formerly of the law commission would probably rightly determine, the Canadian people do not really have the wherewithal to make up their own minds and make reasonable choices about how the justice system in Canada should operate.
At its elimination in 1992, the commission had a budget of about $5 million and a staff of about 30. That was a lot of money. Now the Liberal government wants to revive this law commission. It has set a budget with a benchmark of about $3 million a year. It says the money will come from existing government resources. Anyone who believes that tale I honestly think believes in the tooth fairy; a wilder belief is maybe the Liberal government will some day get its spending under control.
The Liberal government is simply adding another level of bureaucracy to government operations. We have seen over and over again commissions with budget overruns like it is the natural thing to do.
The Canadian people have no reason to believe this commission will not be independent. It will not be accountable to the government except to the wishes of the Minister of Justice.
My hon. friend from Calgary North spoke earlier about this so-called independence. She pointed out very clearly how this commission would operate. There is no doubt the terms of reference for setting up this commission will be at the absolute direction of the Minister of Justice. Despite what the Liberals have said there is no substantive evidence to back up the claim that this will be a truly independent body. We have no reason to believe that. The Canadian people have no reason to believe that.
We have seen how the Minister of Justice operates. We have seen what he does when he wants to give some sort of credence to some of the ludicrous bills he has introduced. He goes out in the field and gathers together some of his political friends who happen to form associations and he gets them to back him up on his decisions.
The Canadian public is not buying that any more. The Minister of Justice now wants to give some extra support to some of the decisions by setting up the law commission. He will then stand in the House and present a bill without any reality of what the Canadian people believe. He is going to present the bill. He will stand up and say: "I would like to inform the House that the law commission has recommended that this reform be made to the criminal justice system". Recommended. I have every reason to believe that the law commission will simply be a rubber stamp for the Minister of Justice. It is a very dangerous situation for this House of Commons and for the criminal justice system in Canada.
The bill will permit the governor in council to appoint-and how many times have we heard that word-a president and four other commissioners and an advisory council consisting of 24 members. I have every reason to believe that every single member of the law commission will be a card carrying member of the Liberal Party of Canada. There is no possible way that a law commission set up by this government, by appointment of the Minister of Justice, can be independent.
There is no doubt that more Liberal appointees will be feathering their nests at the expense of taxpayers. The Liberal government knows that it will have to fight an election in two years. The Liberals want to keep their friends; it is only natural.
The justice system in Canada cannot afford to have a rubber stamp law commission which is held up as an advisory board to help the Minister of Justice put through the law reforms his cappuccino friends in Toronto want. We cannot afford that.
I doubt that when the commission is set up the justice department's budget will be reduced by an appropriate amount. I would like to be able to look into the future to see whether the justice department's budget will be reduced by $3 million. I do not believe the figure of $3 million, but I would like to see the reduction. I do not think it can happen.
If the Liberals have proved anything, it is the ability to mismanage taxpayers' money. Whenever I start talking about Liberals and budgets, I have to remind Canadians that using the Liberals' numbers of 1993, in their term of office the national debt will increase by $100 billion to some $650 billion. The interest payments will rise by some $10 billion to around $55 billion. This is ample evidence that Liberals do not know how to manage money. This gives more credence to the fact that I doubt very much the budget of the Department of Justice will be reduced by the amount which will be spent to finance the law commission.
There is no compelling reason to re-establish the law commission. Law reform is possible without the creation of another government agency which will be supported by Canadian taxpayers. As I stated earlier, the commission will be nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Minister of Justice. No doubt he is desperately seeking some official body to back up his autocratic decisions on gun control and the death penalty. What better way to save his image than to spend $3 million a year to establish a panel of yes people beholden to the Minister of Justice, prepared to put forward or support his personal decisions?
We should be getting our spending under control some day, but most definitely it will not be within the term of office of this government. Consider that the commissioners, the president, the board of advisers are going to be appointed by this government, by the Minister of Justice himself no doubt-