Madam Speaker, I reject the spurious premise of the hon. member's comment.
This motion speaks very clearly to two issues. First, the broad issue of judicial activism; generally, that federal legislation should not be amended or redrafted by judicial rulings. That is a subject which is very worthy of debate. Second, it speaks to the specific issue with respect to appealing the Rosenberg decision. There are two issues at question in this motion. We are not trying to do more than debate those two issues.
What would we do to restrain a hyperactive judiciary? To begin with, we could adopt mechanisms of parliamentary review for the nomination of justices so that we as parliamentarians, on behalf of the Canadian people, can be assured, in a fully transparent and public process, that the people who are taking positions on the bench believe in the constitutional framework of our founders and the parliamentary system.
We would like to have the ability as parliamentarians to question proposed nominees to the bench. We also believe that the courts should have the power to invalidate acts of parliament, but not to rewrite them. This parliament should maintain, as it has for hundreds of years, the ultimate power to re-enact legislation which it believes is consistent with our constitutional framework.
That is why the framers of the 1982 Constitution Act included section 33, the notwithstanding clause, as the ultimate guarantor of parliamentary supremacy and we ought not be afraid to use it at the appropriate time.