Mr. Speaker, what we have from the minister's statement today is another reflection of the contempt that the government holds toward our judiciary and another chink in the wall of judicial independence in our country. We export our judicial independence as a model to the rest of the world. We are currently showing a number of countries our experience in judicial independence, and the government at the same time is undermining that judicial independence.
The Minister of Justice is trying to justify this conduct on the basis that his party won the last election, but I am sure Canadians did not vote for them to break down the role of our independent judiciary. I can assure the House this was not part of the mandate that came out of the last election.
I heard him also trying to justify this by saying the government had to make tough decisions. The tough decision here is really a very simple one, and that is to support the system as it is.
Historically, we have fought the issue of how we pay our judicial appointments in the provincial and federal courts. This has been dragging on for the better part of 20 years. We finally resolved it in 1999 by appointing, through legislation, an independent commission that would review the salaries of judges and their status. That has worked well in most cases.
The Supreme Court of Canada has made it very clear that the commission's report is to be adopted by the House unless there are extraordinary circumstances.
Today the minister is trying to justify extraordinary circumstances. First, he said that we had to look at our financial circumstances. These compensation packages would cover 2004-05. The federal government had surpluses of $10 billion to $12 billion in both of those years, yet the minister tries to justify that the government does not have the money. Try to sell that to a judge some time in the future, which is likely what will happen if we proceed with the legislation as recommended.
The second point the minister has tried to argue is that somehow the government did not take into account the fact that lawyers in private practice got paid differently in small communities as compared to those in large communities. The commission did take that into account. It looked at this very closely, and it is recorded right in the commission's report.
There is no justification for this legislation or for the position taken by the government other than a straight attack on our judiciary. It is unforgivable that the government would do it at this period of time in particular, given some of the statements made by the Prime Minister during the election, given some of the statements made by my colleague from Saskatchewan, which had such notoriety, and given some of the statements the Prime Minister made when he was in opposition.
We have to stop attacking the judiciary and treat them with the independence they are entitled to under our Constitution and in the way we should handle our judiciary in general.