Mr. Speaker, I share many of the concerns raised by my colleague from the Bloc regarding judicial appointments and compensation. I found it useful for my colleague to outline the way the selection of judges is undertaken in the province of Quebec.
I should point out that it is kind of mystifying that the current Minister of Justice who comes from the province of Manitoba should deviate so wildly from the practice of selection that is used in the province of Manitoba. The difference is that the committee that recommends judges on the federal scene is established by the minister and exists at the pleasure of the minister. The minister can take the committee's recommendations or not take its recommendations as he sees fit. The commission that puts names forward in the province of Manitoba is in fact appointed by the minister. Those people are selected by the minister from a short list developed by other outside agencies as per the provincial court act. Legal groups, the law society, et cetera, would recommend those names.
What we have heard from the current Minister of Justice is that he would like to begin putting police officers on the commission that recommends the names of judges. Does the member not feel that this is politicizing the judicial selection process in that clearly, the Minister of Justice has made no secret that he is frustrated by what he believes are judges who are soft on crime. In other words, he is trying to put people on the commission who will put forward names of people who will suit his own views to rule in the way that he sees fit. That way, to me, lies danger. Alarms should go off when we see an effort to politicize the judiciary. One of the cornerstones of a free western democracy is an independent judiciary unaffected by the current minister of the day.