Madam Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to speak on Bill C-37. I think the public would find it very interesting to know that this is not the first time, not the second time but the third time that the government has revisited the Judges Act.
When we have issues such as victim rights, health care, aboriginal issues, economic issues to deal with, this government has tied up this House for the third time through committees to deal with the Judges Act. Why?
It is costing the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars to deal with this act when we have people out there, as my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan mentioned, who cannot even get health care, when we have a judicial system that is clogged up, that denies justice to people, where justice has been absent for too long. The government has failed to take the bull by the horns and address these issues in a substantive and meaningful way.
Even with the Judges Act it had an opportunity to get it right. Instead of dealing with the substantive issue of putting accountability back in the system, transparency, scrutiny, we have the same old system where the prime minister appoints the people he or she sees fit to the Supreme Court of Canada.
That is not what we want. That is not what the public wants. It can be done. It is possible to enter accountability into the judicial system.
We can look at California. California has introduced elected judges. Judges can be elected. They run every six years. They do not run in the traditional sense as we run but they run on their record. They are forbidden to actually campaign. The purity of the system is that the judges are judged by their peers, by the public, on their record alone.
In this way judicial independence can continue. It is very important in a democracy. I would ask that if the government is going to revisit the Judges Act again, heaven forbid, that it consider this a substantive and positive issue rather than tinkering around with issues that have very little meaning or impact on the Canadian people.
There are other things we could have done. It has been intelligently proposed that lower court judges come under scrutiny in provincial or federal legislatures by the judicial justice committee. This would provide some element of scrutiny as to the qualifications of the individuals concerned. This would be a reasonable and cost effective way of ensuring that judges are the best we can attain and are not merely buddy-buddy with the political elites.
There are other issues that can be dealt with and should be dealt with and the government has failed to do this with our justice system. I will present some of the challenges and some of the solutions the government can tear apart and make better for the benefit of all Canadians.
The first thing is to streamline the judicial system which is getting clogged up. We have a system right now where there are ways in which a person can go through the courts for an extraordinarily long period of time while the victims wait in earnest to try to find some end to the situation they are in, some end to their victimization. This could be done if a committee were formed to find effective ways to expedite the judicial system from arrest to conviction.
A DNA databank should be put forth that is effective, cost effective and based on the good science we have which would enable the police force to have the tools and power to arrest and convict those who are guilty in an expeditious way but also enable them to exonerate those individuals who are innocent. The DNA databank cuts both ways. It will be a good decider in trying to differentiate between those individuals who are guilty and those individuals who are innocent.
We have to put justice back in the justice system. Justice delayed is justice denied. Now we have a system where we have enormous delays and procedural influences that can be put forward by clever lawyers who can clog the system for the benefit of their client. The judicial system today and the wars that take place within our courts have little to do with justice and everything to do with how clever and able lawyers are to manipulate a legal system that has more to do with how you can manipulate the system than whether justice is truly being served.
Sometimes I wish I were a lawyer so I could put forth some suggestions. I would implore those who are in the judicial system today who feel frustrated about the system they labour under and who want the best for their clients and the Canadian people to present those solutions to members from all party lines in this House so they can work to develop better solutions so that those individuals who are working in the courts are able to work more effectively.
Give the tools to the police. They are hamstrung in so many ways and they are getting increasingly frustrated as they put their lives on the line to make our streets safe.
I applaud the minister for putting forth her suggestions on crime prevention. A Reform motion was passed in the House of Commons that called for a national headstart program. That was supported by everybody but the Bloc. The minister could use her resources and power and call together in Ottawa her provincial counterparts in human resources, justice and health. The minister could put on the table all the programs today, take out what is not working and keep what is working.
This could be integrated with the medical community, train mentor volunteers in the middle, as was done effectively in Hawaii. Child abuse was reduced by 99%. We could use schools and the educational system for children between the ages of four and eight, use the parents and integrate them into the system. We would have a headstart crime prevention package that would be the most effective way to decrease crime.
We know criminal behaviour in many cases results from a fractured psyche that is a result of situations of child abuse, violence, sexual abuse, improper parenting, absence of proper parenting, and improper nutrition. A combination of all these during that sensitive first eight years of life fractures the development of the psyche and causes future problems, everything from personality disorders to conduct disorders and sometimes criminal behaviour.
The legal aid situation is getting out of hand. It is far too expensive. The system right now is untenable. A creative solution would be to go to a public defender system.
California developed a public defender system where individual lawyers were on salary. The question one had to ask was did this provide the defendants with an adequate defence as compared to the previous legal aid system. This has been analysed and the answer is very conclusive. It demonstrated that those individuals who were being defended under a public defender system had as good or better defence as they had before.