Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois has stated its position on this issue several times, as did my colleague from Roberval a few years ago. Our position is unchanged. In view of the Supreme Court's ruling and referral concerning judges in Prince Edward Island, we hope that the commission will be totally independent of Parliament, and that it will consider a number of totally independent criteria, including the state of the economy and the ability to pay. We also hope that judges' and members' salaries will be linked.
As I said earlier, we were comfortable with the scenario proposed in 1999. The Prime Minister earns the same salary as the Chief Justice. Ministers earn three quarters of that and members earn half.
We do not understand why the Liberals and the Conservatives chose to sever that link. In the end, they chose to intervene by arbitrarily setting judges' salaries. We do not think this is the right thing to do.