Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise at report stage of Bill C-37 to amend to the Judges Act after having been so rudely interrupted by that NDP procedural motion.
The bill seeks to raise the compensation paid to judges appointed by the federal government over the course of two years by 8.3%. Already federally appointed judges on average are paid approximately $140,000 which is not exactly small change. It is a significant chunk of public revenue.
Let me make it clear at the outset that I and my colleagues in official opposition do not object to paying judges or anybody else who works for the public. We do not expect these people to be disadvantaged in terms of their compensation. We think fair compensation ought to apply to judges as it does to all other members of our public service, people who work for the crown.
What concerns me in the bill is the double standard we are creating for one small group within those who work in the public sector, that group being federal judges. It seems particularly strange to me at a time when frontline workers in the federal government, particularly frontline workers in the federal justice system, people such as frontline members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, frontline members of the Correctional Service of Canada, frontline people who enforce our laws, receive little or no pay increases year after year. However, those at the very top of the stratum, those who are already paid far more than most Canadians, would get the biggest increase. Quite frankly the approach taken by the commission which reported and in the legislation seems inequitable, unfair and inappropriate.
The people on the frontline of the justice system like RCMP constables and correctional service officers are people who day after day put their lives on the line for the enforcement of law and order. They are accountable to performance. If they do not perform they can be dismissed. If they make huge errors in judgment they can be dismissed or disciplined. In other words they are accountable.
What about the judges? Are they accountable? No, they are not. They are accountable to no one but themselves. I submit the principle of accountability for compensation ought to apply throughout the public sector just as it does within the private sector.
When my constituents look at some of the judgments made by federal judges at various levels including the Supreme Court of Canada, what they see sometimes astounds them. Other members of my party have made reference to some of the recent shocking court judgments by the people we are now proposing to raise their pay by 8.3%.
For instance, members will have heard recently about the Feeney case. The court ruled that a man who was clearly guilty of first degree murder would be acquitted because a police officer entered his residence without a search warrant, after having knocked on the door and announced himself, to find the perpetrator of this atrocious crime in bed with blood on his person and throughout his trailer from the murder he had just committed. It is unbelievable.
We are now proposing to raise the pay of the judge who made this decision by 8.3%. Not only is he not accountable but we cannot balance his pay with his performance. We have a cast of people who are appointed without public oversight, without parliamentary scrutiny, by the sole discretion of the Governor General in Council, the Prime Minister, and are not accountable even if they make widely outrageous decisions.
What do we say to these people? We say they are not accountable. They make bizarre decisions some of the time. We cannot measure their performance but we will give them an 8.3% pay raise anyway. It is just plain wrong. It shows a completely contorted sense of priorities on the part of the government.
Canadians families are now in the second decade of no after tax increase in their disposable incomes. Frontline workers in the federal government have had no raises for seven years. That we should talk about the best paid people in the country getting an 8.3% pay raise is completely unacceptable.
Yesterday one of my colleagues pointed out that there is a clause in Bill C-37 dealing with survivor benefits, speaking of the spouses of judges. There is a definition of spouse in the act, as there should be. Every federal statute dealing with family benefits requires the term spouse and therefore defines the term.
Recently Madam Justice Rosalie Abella of the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled in the Rosenberg case that the traditional definition of spouse, the definition which exists in Bill C-37 and hundreds of other federal statutes, the definition which is rooted in 1,000 years of common law history and 3,000 years of the Mosaic law tradition, is no longer applicable to all federal statutes including the one we are debating today.
We are proposing to give Madam Justice Abella an 8.3% pay raise after having made a decision contrary to the interest of the government, contrary to the interest of justice, contrary to any kind of public accountability. This justice was appointed without any kind of oversight or scrutiny by the public, by parliament or by elected representatives of the people. She was appointed behind closed doors by bureaucrats in the justice department offering their short list of candidates to the politicians in cabinet to choose one name over another.
We should have a moratorium on pay raises for judges of the federal government until or unless there is some kind of accountability. Once again, compensation must be linked to accountability.
We in the opposition have called for the establishment of a parliamentary committee to review and comment on judicial nominees by the federal government. At least then we could have some kind of screening process to make sure that irresponsible, ideologically driven, radical judges like Rosalie Abella do not find their way on to the bench. If people like Rosalie Abella want to legislate their political agenda I suggest they run for public office as has everyone in this place and not sit on the bench where they think they can unilaterally impose their political agenda, peculiar as it may be, on the rest of Canadians.
The time has come for us to review the entire process of appointments of judges and the enormous undemocratic power which our courts exercise. Until we have done that we cannot and should not offer them a reward in terms of a 8.3% pay increase until they are finally accountable for the decisions they make.