Mr. Speaker, I think a lot of Canadians found it rather shocking to suppose, if I understand the case, that unless judges are paid more they could be open to bribery. Therefore their integrity may be for sale unless the government pays them more. I find that to be a tremendous insult to the many fine people we have on the bench.
If we extend that argument we could say that law enforcement officers, members of Parliament and legislators should be paid a lot more for the same reason. I think the whole premise behind that judgment was certainly very flawed and suspect in its assessment of the character of our judiciary.
However, the member did ask me about the way judges are appointed and whether that could be improved. I certainly agree with him, as do most Canadians, that simply basing appointments to the bench on patronage, past faithful service to a particular party is very undesirable.
I remember how naive I was in law school. Some days I think I still am but I was more so then. We had a visiting judge. I asked him afterwards how one became a judge. I know that really sounds naive but I was quite curious. He laughed and said most people would say it depends on belonging to the right political party. Surely we can do a lot better than that in this country.
The Reform Party wants to reform this patronage appointment process to make it a lot more transparent and publicly accountable. We formed a task force which made recommendations in a report to our national assembly in Vancouver in 1996.
What the Reform task force recommended was an appointment process whereby a Commons committee made up of the elected representatives of the people would review and interview candidates whose names were put forward for judicial appointments. We felt this would open up the process a great deal and ensure that it was not simply done in the back rooms of the PMO, by whomever was handling the patronage appointments of the day.
We need to push very vigorously for this kind of reform to restore trust and confidence in the judicial system and in its integrity and objectiveness.