Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take the floor today on this new matter of judges’ salaries.
I must confess, however, that I am discouraged. It is my impression that the Conservative government is continuing on the same path as the previous Liberal government in choosing to assign an independent commission authority for setting judges’ salaries, while at the same time not hesitating to act against those recommendations to suit the mood of the moment.
In 1999 we had found a solution, which was supposed to be definitive, to the problem of setting the salaries of members of Parliament and judges. To avoid bursts of demagoguery and ensure that salaries and other monetary benefits are equitably adjusted, parliamentarians chose to link the salaries of parliamentarians to those of judges, the latter being set by an independent commission every four years.
This solution, developed by all the parties represented in the House of Commons, seemed to us to be reasonable.
The commission was required by law to propose a reasonable salary, taking into account the state of the economy, the government’s financial position, the role of the financial security of judges in preserving judicial independence, and the need to recruit the best candidates to the judiciary.
The Prime Minister was going to earn the same salary as the chief justice of the Supreme Court; ministers, three quarters of that salary; MPs would receive an annual sessional allowance of 50% of the yearly salary of the chief justice of Canada, and so forth. The solution was simple and fair. It preserved the independence of the judiciary and ensured that parliamentarians did not have to set their own salary.
Everything was fine until the Judicial Compensation and Benefits Commission proposed an inordinate increase in 2004. In a panic, the Liberal government and the Conservative opposition chose to play petty politics and unlink the salaries of MPs and judges, instead of calmly analyzing the situation and proposing a review of the remuneration suggested by the commission.
It appears that the Conservative government has decided to continue the tradition of hypocrisy and simplistic populism of the Liberal government in this matter, by continuing to separate the salaries of parliamentarians and judges.
Admittedly, setting the salaries of parliamentarians and judges is still an extremely difficult and thankless task, for one simple reason: these are people who are well compensated, even very well compensated. The citizens who pay these salaries often find them to be out of all proportion. That brings me to the solution which the Bloc is proposing to the government as a way out of this mess.
Because it is necessary to establish an arms-length salary-setting mechanism for parliamentarians as well as for judges, the Bloc Québécois is calling for the government to reintroduce a legislative obligation to link the salaries of parliamentarians to the salaries of judges.
Also, because the indexing of the salaries of judges and parliamentarians has to be reasonable, the Bloc Québécois is asking that the salaries of judges be based on the same indexing mechanism as the salaries of parliamentarians, so that their salaries increase each year in step with those of unionized employees of big corporations and the private sector.
That seems to us reasonable and equitable.