Madam Speaker, thank you for your suggestion. Nevertheless, my hon. colleague for Provencher has asked an excellent question that deserved to be raised. Of course, he knows very well what I think about federalism. No doubt, he knows that my political goal is not to improve the Canadian federation but to get out of it.
That said, he is, in fact, right about the various hypotheses raised. Furthermore, a member from his party had raised a very similar question in a debate I took part in a few weeks ago.
Yes, there are several possible avenues, such as having an independent tribunal consider the qualifications of appointees. The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights could very well do this. Parliamentarians could be asked to play a role.
As to the popular argument that if changes are made to how judges are appointed, this will take away from the judiciary's independence and its appearance of independence in Canada, I think that the complete opposite is true. Now, people wonder when a former president of the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party of Quebec gets appointed. Rightly or wrongly, they wonder already.
In closing, since I know that many members want to ask questions, I want to emphasize that the doubt in people's minds does more harm to the judiciary in Canada, which has an increasingly important role in defining our public policies, than another more impartial, independent and, at the very least, non-partisan process would.