Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and speak to Motion No. 288. For those individuals who are looking in on this debate today, I wish to explain that the motion is asking the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to study the process by which judges are appointed to the Federal Court of Appeal and to the Supreme Court of Canada.
An independent judiciary is one of the most important pillars for a stable society anywhere in the world. As my colleagues from the Bloc have mentioned, not only should justice be seen to be done, it must also be perceived as being fair. Ordinary Canadians must be able to put their full confidence in a judiciary system and expect judgments to be fair and right.
Canada has a good judiciary system and Canadians do have confidence in it. However, after the charter of rights was introduced Canadians are now perceiving judges as reading into the laws of this land. Our Constitution gives Parliament the power to make laws. The judiciary has the paramount duty of ensuring that those laws that are passed in this Parliament are administered fairly across this nation. That is democracy.
Recently, judgments that have come forward have raised questions as to how far the power in the judiciary or Parliament can go in interpreting laws. On many occasions this has been a cause of serious concern in many parts of this country. Are justices of the Supreme Court going too far?
Since there is so much power overlapping in some cases and since judges influence the laws passed by elected officials, we should look at the process of appointing judges more openly. Hence the motion brought in by my colleague from the Bloc.
As the parliamentary secretary mentioned in his speech, the Prime Minister of Canada appoints judges to the Supreme Court of Canada. The bottom line is quite simple. He can consult with individuals, but nothing in the act says he must follow their advice. At the end of the day he is solely responsible for appointing them. That is quite a lot of power in a society as ours with such regional diversity across this nation. One has to wonder why a Prime Minister would have so much power to shape the direction of society by appointing the kind of judges he liked to the Supreme Court.
Examples in the past have indicated that Conservative Party prime ministers appointed Conservative judges to the Supreme Court while Liberal prime ministers appointed Liberal judges.
Well let us just say this. Canadians do not want Liberal or Conservative judges. They want competent judges. They want judges who are not tied to any political party so that they can make fair and square judgments upon which Canadians can rely.
Such as with the last appointment made to the Supreme Court of Canada, it always comes down that there is somewhere along the line a Liberals Party connection. Formerly there would have been a Conservative Party connection when the Conservatives were in power under Brian Mulroney.
It begs a simple question. Why can we not have a transparent, independent system? The motion calls for that. Let us send it to the committee. Let us look at it.
At the end of the day, the beneficiary of this motion, the beneficiary of an open and transparent system, is the Canadian public, Canadian society. The primary reason we are in the House of Commons is to address the issues that Canadian society wants us to address.
I fail to understand why anybody would not want to look at the system and try to improve upon it to give it more accountability and to make sure that there are good candidates.
Let me say right now it is not my view that there are any bad candidates on the Supreme Court. All we are saying is it is time to look at the process. We must ensure that the process is one with which Canadians are extremely comfortable and which has a fair and equitable system of appointing judges to the bench. That is all the motion is asking for and I will be supporting the motion fully.