Madam Speaker, does the hon. member for Selkirk—Interlake, who stressed what he regards as the financial unaccountability of the international court, accept the fact that there is an assembly of states parties that will elect the prosecutor and judges for the court on the basis of established qualifications, that the assembly will be able to remove judges for improper conduct, will have management oversight of budgets and will audit the operations of the court?
Does this international court not have a good deal of accountability? I would contend that it has a lot more accountability than the present ad hoc tribunals do, at least the one in Arusha. Perhaps the member is aware that there have been all kinds of administrative and other problems with the ad hoc tribunal operating in Arusha.
Is it not more cost effective to have a standing court rather than continually reinventing the wheel, such as we have had to do in the case of the ad hoc tribunals?
The member said that we were buying a pig in a poke. That is a good metaphor but where is the pig and where is the poke? It seems to me that this court is something that has been shrieked for by what has been happening around the world, which the member knows very well. I would urge him to reconsider what he said about the lack of accountability in the bill.