Mr. Speaker, it was interesting that while my colleague was speaking I heard from the other side of the House that a person can be a player and a referee if it is a different game.
I would suggest that if the chief referee of the NHL were to suit up for the Montreal Canadiens there probably would be something of incredibility on the part of people in the stands. They would simply not accept that. In fact, even in that, which is at a totally different level to what we are talking about when we are talking
about the supreme court of Ontario, there is just no way that we could end up having it fit.
There is more to it than that.
The reality is that within our system we are at the mercy of the judicial system as to how it in turn interprets the law. There was a very interesting exchange earlier with the member for Winnipeg and my colleague from Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca about the whole issue of whether the supreme court actually ends up making law on the basis of the charter of rights and freedoms. As a result of Pierre Trudeau and the whole thought process of the Liberals where we now have a charter industry populated by very high priced lawyers, we now have an even more of a requirement for there to be an absolute, positive, total, utter chasm between prosecution and the defence and the judiciary.
To my colleague, I would say that the ends do not justify the means. Louise Arbour will be a prosecutor in The Hague while still a member of the impartial bench of Canada. The justice minister is on record as saying in a Senate standing committee that there are no provisions in the judges act allowing her to accept this appointment. That is an important issue. There are no provisions in the judges act allowing her to accept this appointment. He said that. Yes, I agree with my colleague, one cannot play the game and be a referee at the same time no matter what the circumstances are.
An exemption for a particular person from public policy such as Madam Justice Arbour is called a private bill. Again, this did not come to the House as a private bill. Public policy goes through the House as a public bill. There is no provision in the rules for a hybrid, public-private bill.
Again we are referring to the justice minister of Canada, the chief lawyer of Canada, who is saying do not sweat the small stuff, do not worry about the niggling details. This is not good enough, not nearly good enough. I would think that any lawyer in Canada would realize that for the justice minister to say do not sweat the small stuff, do not worry about the details, would have to question the total confidence of a person in as high a position as the justice minister of Canada.
The justice minister is contravening the rules of this House by forcing this amendment through in a public bill. What has made it even worse is that he and the government are in a process of not only forcing it through the House but forcing it through the House by closure. We know there has been closure on some bills in the House which has been rather interesting. We have even seen closure and situations of people taking different positions in the House. It seems as though there is a question in the mind of this government as to whether it can actually get down to governing in a proper way. It has simply gone power hungry, power crazy on closure rather than taking the time through a process of negotiation with the Reform and with the Bloc, the official opposition, to get bills through the House in an orderly manner. But it is not doing that.
We have tabled a multi-point amendment. It makes the condition of Madam Justice Arbour's leave of absence more stringent. We insist that in this process details must be adhered to. And not withstanding the laissez faire, do not worry about the detail attitude of our justice minister, we are going to continue to act as the guardians of the Canadian justice system, notwithstanding the fact that the justice minister says do not worry about the details.