I can continue on, Madam Speaker, if you want to have time to rule on whether or not that is an acceptable amendment. I certainly hope that you find it is so.
Regarding that particular amendment, if I may draw your attention to the amendment that I have just given to you, the Speaker ruled this morning, and he quoted certain references and precedents, that he did not have the authority to amend a message from the other place and that the right to amend the message from the other place rested with this House. On my point of order which asked that the part regarding Madam Justice Louise Arbour be the subject matter of a private bill, he felt that the decision had to rest with the House rather than with the Chair. I do hope you will agree that we can debate the motion and arrive at a conclusion by this
House on whether or not we want to proceed with what is being proposed by the Senate as an amendment to Bill C-42.
However, continuing on, the concerns that we have regarding Madam Justice Louise Arbour cannot be overstated. Again, I respect the integrity of Madam Justice Louise Arbour and the work she has done on the bench.
The point is that while she has the reputation as being an eminent jurist and has been selected by the United Nations for this arduous work in Brussels, according to the Alberta Report she sought the job herself. She was not selected because of her reputation around the world. The point is that if she did, this government has acquiesced in a most inappropriate manner, in a retrospective manner rather than in a proactive manner.
The Minister of Justice has told the House many times that his responsibility is to uphold the rule of law. It is his responsibility to uphold the rule of law. We now have a Canadian jurist in another country working for the United Nations to uphold international law and to prosecute horrendous and horrific crimes. We do not doubt the great work that needs to be done over there and we do not criticize the fact that it is an honour for a Canadian to prosecute.
However, we do concern ourselves with the integrity of the judicial system at home. If it requires a waiver of the Judges Act-retroactively I might add-for the jurist to go over there to uphold the rule of law, we are sending the wrong message. The message being sent is that we are prepared to bend and retroactively change our laws to allow this to happen when she is over there to uphold the law. There is an incongruity which needs to be addressed very carefully.
The rules of the House have been circumvented somewhat by the fact that this was introduced as a public bill, that it passed this Chamber as a public bill, is now back before us as a hybrid public-private bill which is not allowed by the rules of the House. There is division in the House whether we should be circumventing the rules in this way. I feel this casts a shadow on the appointment of Madam Justice Louise Arbour to fulfil these obligations for the United Nations. If the minister had wanted Canada's reputation as a prosecutor for justice to go around the world, then he should have been more careful in the way he approached the matter.
I respect the integrity and the competence of Madam Justice Louise Arbour. She is a jurist and in her new job she is to be a prosecutor. It means she will be on one side prosecuting the other side. I do not dispute the fact that she is prosecuting crimes of a horrific nature. But the point is that she is a prosecutor and she presumably intends to return to the bench and to that independent, impartial position. She has in essence removed herself from that independent, impartial position by accepting this position as a prosecutor.
Again, I am very much concerned that when she returns to the bench her impartiality might be challenged. It is a very problematic question. I would have hoped that the Minister of Justice would have thought that through, discussed it with the other members of the House, perhaps even discussed it with members of the other Chamber in order that Canada could have made and endorsed this appointment in order for Madam Justice Louise Arbour to take up these onerous duties and be a shining light for justice around the world and for Canada.