Madam Speaker, the member seemed to be at one point in his dissertation struggling with the subject matter. I thought for a moment that I should rise and suggest that he share his time with a Liberal. I would have been happy to have a speech of my own on this subject.
If the House and the member will indulge me, I would not mind a somewhat extensive comment to the speech he just gave and a comment that I hope he will answer. I have the bill before me and it is all about numbers. It is about remuneration. Page after page we see the bill describe how much judges should be paid and all that kind of thing. It looks very important.
I say to the member opposite that we are missing an opportunity in the legislation because there is an opportunity to do something in the bill, not only for judges, but for people.
I had occasion to be in Alberta a month and a half ago trying to get a line on the case that is before the Alberta courts involving Mr. Stephen Harper and the crown. It deals with a charter challenge of the Canada Elections Act pertaining to certain aspects of third party advertising that is in the current legislation.
I was amazed to discover that I could not get court transcripts. What has happened in Alberta and many other jurisdictions is that the courts and the government have farmed out the taking of trial transcripts to private firms that record the actual verbatim testimony. A citizen, or even somebody who is a defendant at the trial, has to then purchase page by page the transcripts which can run into many thousands of pages.
What that does is make it impossible for the ordinary citizen, much less the person who is the defendant in the case, to have access to the deliberations of that particular court. This becomes very important when it is a charter challenge because something like that is of interest and of importance to every Canadian. Not only do we have to purchase it, but we cannot get it through the normal means.
I would have thought, and I would like the member to comment on this, that we in the House should be very concerned about the lack of transparency and the lack of opportunity of ordinary Canadians to know what is going on in the courts, issues that concern charter challenges, or any other case before the courts that has a wide public interest.
I would have thought that it would have been incumbent upon governments and indeed incumbent upon the courts to not only make the transcripts publicly available for free but to put them on the Internet, so Canadians can follow these very important deliberations. What I found out was that I could not gain access to the transcripts without paying for them page by page.
While I am probably a little bit more affluent than the average Canadian, at $1,000 a shot, it was not something I was prepared to do. I point out that this is not even an expense that is covered by the House. If I want to see the transcripts, it would appear that I would have to pay for them out of my own pocket. This is a situation that I do not believe is good for the country.
I cited a case in Alberta but I believe it is the same situation in Ontario and other jurisdictions. I suggest to the member opposite that if we really want to do something that is important for the public, we should be pressuring the government to add an amendment to the bill, phrase it so that it would require courts to take transcripts of the testimony and make the transcripts available to the public, not only for free, but also available on the Internet, so that all Canadians can be engaged in the kind of important debates that occur in the courts when someone like Mr. Stephen Harper decides to challenge the crown on something like the Canada Elections Act and makes it a charter challenge.
This is something that every Canadian should be engaged in and be able to follow. The only answer to that is to make all court transcripts available to the public for free.