Mr. Speaker, we have a solution to the problem. We had two Rhodes scholars and another very intelligent lawyer, Peter Lougheed, who saw the danger. All three of them saw it. One was NDP. One was a middle of the road Tory. I think the other one may have been on the right a bit. They all saw the danger and they insisted on including the notwithstanding clause.
The prime minister at the time and the current Prime Minister, were very much involved with that process and they consented to it. However, since the adoption of that act in 1982 we have not had a prime minister decide to exercise that power in the face of some really outrageous things.
One example was the Singh decision. This person landed on our shores. The Supreme Court of Canada decided that even though he was not a Canadian he was entitled to the full protection of our Canadian legal system: the charter or rights, due process and everything along the line. Then there was a series of appeals and so on, and in reaction to it the government said the only way to deal with it was to expand the immigration department and all our internal appeal procedures.
Anybody who had anything to do with immigration law smiled from ear to ear. This was a new engine of growth for that whole area and there has been a flock of people move into the area. That is why we have these problems today. They are being debated in the House and taxpayers are spending a disproportionate amount of money on the whole system when common sense would say that there is a better way of dealing with it.
The government has not decided to take that action because it would mean exercising something called the notwithstanding clause which enshrined in our constitution the supremacy of parliament. The prime minister at the time would not have gone ahead with the constitution if he had not understood that. He was a very intelligent man. He understood the significance of what that notwithstanding clause meant.
I am really amazed at how governments since that period of time have failed to exercise that power. It is very frightening. I keep going back to my analogy of the hockey referee. I cannot see the owners ever turning all that power over to referees, not just to enforce the rules and call them fairly and so on, but to say that if they do not like the rules halfway through the third period they can be rewritten whichever way they want.
That is basically what the government has been doing with our system. It has given the nine men and women on the Supreme Court of Canada a blank cheque in this whole area. It has basically told them they have the ultimate authority, that although people elected them to be the Government of Canada they are wiser and smarter, and that the public really does not know what is best so they have the final decision.