Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in debate on the supply day motion before us, that in the opinion of the House federal legislation should not be amended or redrafted by judicial rulings as has happened in the redefinition of the term spouse in the Rosenberg decision and that accordingly the government should immediately appeal the Rosenberg decision.
At the outset I would like to make something clear which seems not to have been completely understood in this debate to this point. We are essentially debating two propositions in this motion.
First is the general proposition that federal legislation should not be amended or redrafted by judicial rulings, in other words, the proposition of the principle of parliamentary supremacy. That is a centrally important subject which ought to seize all members of this place. All Canadians ought to be engaged in the dynamic and centrally important debate about the appropriate role of the courts vis-à-vis the supremacy of parliament. This essentially is a debate not between parliamentary supremacy and judicial review, but between parliamentary supremacy or judicial supremacy.
Ultimately in any system of government where checks and balances are divided and authority is separated between different branches of government, one must be supreme. We cannot avoid that ultimate question. The answer which the tradition of parliament and our common law has provided to us over the last several hundred years is that parliament is supreme. This is the highest court of the land. The buck stops here with respect to the law that is made for all Canadians.
That is the first general premise of the motion to which I will speak.
I want to emphasize the second element of the motion which is that the government should immediately appeal the Rosenberg decision.
I cannot understand for the life of me why any member would oppose at least the second proposition in this motion, that the government ought immediately to appeal the Rosenberg decision. As it appears from the debate this morning, there are members among us who believe that the courts ought to have the power to rewrite federal legislation regardless of what we or our constituents believe. That is a respectable position to hold, but we have not yet allowed the courts to have the final word on this.
The Rosenberg decision, which we are discussing, was a decision of the appeals court of the province of Ontario. The last I checked my constitutional law, the appeals court of a province is not the highest judicial tribunal of the land, but rather the Supreme Court of Canada is.
All we are asking in the second element of this motion is for the Attorney General of Canada to have her officials file an order to appeal before the Supreme Court of Canada the judgment of the Ontario appeals court. I say to my colleagues here who support the notion of judicial supremacy over parliamentary supremacy to allow their allies in the judiciary, allow the marvellous judges of the supreme court to have their say which they have not yet had.
I find a certain irony in all of this. The learned judge who wrote the majority decision at the Ontario appeals court, Madam Justice Rosalie Abella, we understand was very much in the running for appointment to the most recent opening to the Supreme Court of Canada. Is it not interesting that the very same justice minister who has been prevaricating now for six weeks on whether or not to appeal Madam Justice Abella's decision to the Supreme Court of Canada is the very same attorney general who would not appoint that justice to the Supreme Court of Canada.