Mr. Speaker, I had an opportunity to partly answer the Bloc leader's question when I answered the question of the House leader for the official opposition.
This year, when the Judicial Compensation and Benefits Commission prepared its report, which was released by the government in the fall, it decided of its own motion to change the method for calculating judicial compensation and determining whether it is appropriate.
Previously, it was linked to factors in the public service, such as senior government officials. The commission decided to look at how much lawyers were paid in major city firms to determine what would be appropriate compensation for federally appointed judges.
For this reason, and partly because the recommended parliamentary compensation appeared to be slightly higher than what Canadians make on average, we saw fit to delink our salaries from judicial compensation and link them instead to the compensation of Canadians.