Mr. Speaker, I am happy to retract it. It was not meant in any way to be cheap. It was simply in reference to the last time we had a debate in this place when that gentleman and I got fairly heated with one another.
Do not be too sensitive. I withdraw the remark. I agree that it has no relevance here.
Let me go back to what I was saying. It is a three-part motion. If the party was being in the slightest bit honest about what it wants to attempt here it would not couch the initial part which deals with its opinion that federal legislation should not be altered by judicial rulings. Then it puts it together with the definition of “spouse” in the Rosenberg decision. The third part is about the right of appeal.
There was a bit of a Freudian slip by one of the members opposite. When he was reading the entire motion, the Reform member, and forgive me, I forget his riding, said on the third part that the government should immediately “repeal”, not appeal, the decision. The motion reads “the government should appeal”. It is the member opposite who said, in a rather interesting mistake, that the government should repeal the Rosenberg decision. That mistake tells me a lot. That mistake, and I assume it is a mistake and was not said intentionally, really underlines the true feeling of the Reform Party, which is that parliament should simply have the right when it does not like a judge's decision to repeal it.
It is astounding that the Reform Party, which so often wraps itself in the veil of liberty and the protection of freedom for all, would want to give any government, other than its own which we know we will never see, that kind of power. Think about the ramifications.
We could stand in this place and say we do not like a decision that was made by any court in the land and if we could get the support of enough of our colleagues we could overturn the decision. It would lead to anarchy.
I do not like to use extreme terms because Reform members try to pretend that when we do that we are painting them as something they are not. But they are not thinking logically about the impact of turning that kind of power over to a group of men and women which could change every three, four or five years.
Look at the demographics of change now. We have what is referred to as Canada's pizza parliament, with five different parties. There are regional interests. The interests of the people in the west are going to be different than the interests of the people in Ontario. We all know that the interests of the people who the Bloc purports to represent are different than the interests of the majority in this place.
This system is based on the separation of parliamentary procedure and the judiciary. To put them together would be very dangerous.
In the United Kingdom I was talking to some British parliamentarians not long ago who are looking at actually writing a charter of rights. They do not have one. The people from Westminster who founded the democratic parliamentary system do not have a written constitution. This country had to go to them to get its Constitution and they never had one. They do not have a charter of rights. They are looking at putting one together.
The member opposite asked my colleague why we do not understand that the judge is rewriting law. What they fail to understand is that the judge is interpreting law. That is the judge's job, based on the charter of rights and the Constitution. That is what they get so excited about. They want good old “I will get my six guns on and I am going to change the law”. That is what they want. That is not the way this country has been built.
The Reform Party talks about power to the unelected. When it comes down to judicial matters which require someone with tremendous experience of the law to understand the impact they will have on people, frankly, I have a lot more confidence in the judges in this country than I do in members of the Reform Party. To turn that kind of authority or power over to this place is just not realistic.
We can debate the impact of certain decisions on society.
I mentioned that this motion was broken down into three areas. The Reform Party would have judges elected the way they do in the United States. That is not on. That is not the kind of policy Canadians want. They do not want someone sitting at the bar making a decision based on their chances of getting re-elected. They want them sitting on the bench based on what the proper decision is, based on the laws of this land, and based on constitutional rights and the charter of rights and freedoms.
It is curious that they would wrap this issue of judicial accountability into the issue of the definition of same sex benefits or spousal benefits.
I have never believed that one get rights because of sexual orientation. I also do not believe one should lose them. I do not believe the country is built on the principles of being able to say because one is different one does not get this right and someone else does. That is not what Canada is about.
In the simplistic mentality and jargon of members of the Reform Party that is exactly the kind of system they would be creating. If they were truly interested in reform of the judiciary, why would they pick this decision instead of others?
I heard a member opposite talking about the immigration minister having a right to appeal. That is exactly the point. The minister has the right to appeal, not repeal but appeal, just like Canadians. It is amazing. It makes us equal in this place. We can appeal that decision. We can then change the law if we want to write new law and it will be interpreted by the courts based on that new law, our constitution and our charter.
I cite an example from the Daily Mail in London, England. I referred earlier to the U.K. which has decided to change the way it deals with fraud, people who commit fraud when trying to get into the U.K. It has turned it around from some cases which took 10 years to get through a judiciary process and otherwise to doing it now in seven days. We can do that. Parliament has the power to do that.
Judges make decisions about asylum seekers that a number of us do not like. It has happened where members on this side of the House do not like it any more than those on the other side of the House. Should we simply say that is it and overrule the judge? That would create an absolute catastrophe in a bureaucracy. It would be a frightening scenario that would leave it to the subjective minds of people who perhaps are going into an election, are unsure of their footing and do not have a history or knowledge steeped in the law.
This is dangerous. This is very dangerous ground. Reformers in my view are doing nothing more than pretending to want to change the judiciary while highlighting their concerns over issues relating to sexual orientation. If we separate them and have debate in this place on both issues I would have no difficulty, but trying to cloud one with the other is less than dishonest. It is hypocritical.