Mr. Speaker, I will take the member's word on it for that damning critique of the way the provincial government appoints judges in his province. I would not want to dispute that. Hopefully it is something the people of Alberta will take into account today.
I go back to the first part of his question or comment when he talked about the appointment process. I seems to me that like so many other things around here everything is connected to everything else. He suggested that possible appointees, or recommended appointees or candidates for appointment to the supreme court should be brought before the appropriate committee of the House of Commons for vetting, or for conversation, or for investigation or whatever. To do that without parliamentary reform will not do the trick.
The American system works because the government does not control the committees. The American system works because there is some chance that people who are of the same party as the appointer, the president, might not do what the president wants. There is a real process.
We have a problem in Canada. There are all kinds of things we cannot really reform unless we reform the House of Commons. To just bring candidates for nomination to the supreme court before a committee that is run by Liberals for Liberals and have them rubber stamped in the way that so many other things are rubber stamped, what would that accomplish?
I do not want to be the counsel of despair but on the other hand we have a bigger job ahead of us than just putting them before a committee. We have to change the committee and parliamentary culture in order to make it a meaningful event, otherwise it will be another charade like so many of the other things that happen around here.