Mr. Speaker, I thank my learned friend for the comments. He raises a number of interesting points. I am not going to stand before the House and debate the merits of or try to in any way defend some of the inflated salaries of certain professions. I am a huge sports fan, Mr. Speaker, as I know you are, and as are many members of the House, but I would never try to justify the merits of paying an athlete literally hundreds of millions of dollars on occasion to sign long term contracts versus the paying for the performance of a researcher who is trying to find the cure for cancer or of an individual who is volunteering to go into a war torn area and put his life at risk to try to aid others.
These discrepancies and anomalies in certain professions and in the remuneration that people receive are in many ways cannon fodder for debate and criticism, but there is no way to justify or even begin to reconcile the remuneration and the salaries that are put in place.
Having said that, I come from a region not unlike the hon. member's when it comes to the salaries that a person would command in our profession as a lawyer or in other professions. There are certainly cost of living considerations when one looks at other regions of the country. Calgary, Toronto and Montreal are perhaps the most obvious that come to mind when one considers the salaries in some regions versus others.
Whether that would merit an examination of regional bonuses when it comes to judges or judicial appointments and differences in the judicial salaries of his province of Saskatchewan or my own of Nova Scotia vis-à-vis Ontario, I would suggest that it might cause more consternation and more difficulty than it would resolve.
I do not think I particularly agree that we should be examining how to somehow perhaps skew the compensation based on the salary levels of various provinces, although it does raise problems. Are we going to be drawing the very best from Ontario if we cannot offer them a salary in the range which they command in their profession currently? It is a difficulty that I guess can only be resolved when one can peer into the heart and soul of a person who wants to serve in that capacity.
I would suggest, and I think the hon. member would be quick to agree, that anyone in the legal profession who has practised law as long as he has and is now serving his country with distinction in the House of Commons would consider it a great honour to be appointed to a judgeship at any level. That is part of the individual personal decision that one has to make, along with remuneration, job satisfaction and any number of other listed factors that come into play when a person makes a decision.
The hon. member raises a number of interesting points. I look forward to debating this issue further in committee and I thank him again for his comments.