Mr. Speaker, I am glad we had that interruption. It is nice to know that the Senate is actually doing something.
We have been talking about adding social condition to the charter as one of the conditions that we would no longer be able to discriminate against in Canada, although, again, I do not know how we would define social condition. There is no definition in the dictionary, so it is a hard thing to know exactly how to define.
This leads me to the second point which talks about judicial activism. I am concerned that by adding another category called social condition to the charter the lawyers are going to have a field day trying to interpret for the benefit of the judges and to have the judges rule on what social condition means. Will social condition be used to justify all sorts of interference by the courts into the lives of ordinary Canadians? How do we prove to someone that a social condition is a discriminatory act?
If we need to mail someone a letter, can we ask whether they have a job, or a mailing address, or whether we can do a background check on them? Would that be a discriminatory act? Is it somehow meanspirited and nasty to ask people to do certain things based on their social condition?
Other provinces have added social condition to their provincial charters. Almost without exception they have not been able to use it in the courts. It is so undefined it takes a lot of court time and a lot of imaginative work by the lawyers with very little constructive action on behalf of poor people themselves.
My concern for judicial activism is well grounded in recent decisions that have happened here in Canada. Judges have taken it upon themselves to write laws, reinterpret laws and rewrite laws on behalf of Canada and override the express wishes of the House of Commons. That is a bad trend.
We in this House have voted on the extension of spousal benefits to same sex couples. I think that is a good subject to debate in this place. We will hear good arguments pro and con. Regardless of a person's personal position on it or what they may say in debate, this is the place to decide those things. Instead the courts step in and overrule what was an express decision of parliament that I voted on in the last House. The courts say that regardless of what was done in the House, they are going to make that decision.
We in this place took a position on child pornography and said it is wrong for people to use and possess child pornography. Then a judge in my own home province stepped in and said, “I do not care what you guys said. I am going to interpret that law differently. I am going to strike down the child pornography ruling”. And the justice minister said not to feel so bad, at least it is only in my province. In my province, there is no law now against the use and possession of child pornography.
When judges choose to step in and overrule and make the law in huge decisions, like the Delgamuukw decision which has now tossed my province into complete turmoil on land use and aboriginal use of land issues, it causes havoc.
Within the Reform Party we believe that rather than allow judges to exercise increased and increasing influence in Canada, there needs to be a reasonable balance between the judiciary branch and the legislative branch here in this place.
Part of that balance means that this House should have an opportunity to be involved in the selection and appointment of justices, in reviewing controversial decisions by a judicial review committee, by ensuring that legislation has an adequate preamble as to the purpose of the legislation, what we are trying to accomplish with it, what we do not want accomplished with it and by having good definitions within the law itself and so on.
There are lots of ways to make sure the House of Commons is the supreme law making body in the country and that we do not turn over, by abdicating our role to the judiciary, the chance to unduly not just interpret laws but to actually make laws.