Mr. Speaker, I really did appreciate the speech which I just listened to by the member for Kootenay East. He talked about not sweating the details. I think he was quoting the Minister of Justice in question period last week.
The point I would like the hon. member to give the House his opinion on is while Madam Justice Arbour has been asked by the United Nations to a do a tremendously worthy job on behalf of all humanity, to go over there and uphold international law and to let international law be a beacon of light for civilization around the world, would it not be a sleight on the job that she is going to be doing if we have to trample over the Canadian law to let her go over there to uphold the law?
That seems to be the issue that the hon. member was arguing, that while no one is disputing the great responsibility and the fact that someone from Canada has been selected to do this particular position, in our haste to accommodate the United Nations to allow her to go over there and uphold the law we have trampled over our own rules.
It seems to me rather strange that we would do that because surely it would cast some kind of aspersion on her capacity over there if we find that the laws of Canada have been broken to accommodate the United Nations. That is one point I would ask him to consider.
The second point I would ask him to consider which I would like his opinion on too is this idea that Madam Justice Louise Arbour has been granted a leave of absence from the bench for as long as she is required because there is no return date in this particular motion. We do not know how long she is going to be gone, but she is on the bench. Although she has a leave of absence she is still a member of the bench in this country with the superior court in the province of Ontario.
She is what one might call a referee in the game of law. Yet now she is going to be a player. On one side she is going to be the prosecutor at the international court in The Hague. We get into this situation of being both the player and the referee. We have people in this House who are quite familiar with the game of hockey, for example, who know full well that you cannot be a referee and a player because the whole thing just tends to fall apart.
I would like to have the member's opinion on whether one should, can be or whether it is advisable under these conditions to be both a referee and a player and the fact that we have ignored our own internal laws to allow her to take over this position at the United Nations.