The heckling from the other side, Mr. Speaker, was because they really did not want me to explain how a minority government should operate and how in Lester Pearson's time everything was not a confidence motion. By working together to get things done, we passed so much progressive legislation by the former Liberal prime minister, whether it was the Canada pension plan, medicare, employment insurance and so on. It showed what could be done in a minority Parliament and Prime Minister Pearson showed us the way. It is too bad the present Prime Minister would not work cooperatively with the other parties. As my colleague said earlier, the government itself is even filibustering so many committees.
However, I am getting off my topic. The government members on the other side derailed my line of thought, and that is not necessarily a good thing. However, it is a good thing to explain how well Prime Minister Pearson governed and did so many positive things as compared to the current Prime Minister when it is either his way or the highway.
I will get back to Bill C-31. I will use several examples of our worries about the bill. My colleague from York West mentioned some of them, but they are important enough to mention again.
The bill does nothing to address the concerns our party has raised in the past regarding Conservative government attacks on judicial independence. My colleague from York West used an example and I will use another one. The attacks on the judiciary by some ideologically driven folks on the other side even had the Chief Justice feeling that she had reason to criticize the government for its attacks on judicial independence. That should not happen.
First, we have a judicial system in our country because of the good appointments in the past. Because of that strong independence, it is seen as one of the best judicial systems in the world. It is a system that really has not allowed a great deal of politics to enter into it to date. I know there are some efforts on the other side to do that, but we would hope that independence remains.
The second worry is the same Conservative government stacked the judicial advisory councils to ensure the justice minister's chosen representatives would have a majority voice on every provincial judiciary advisory board. When it comes to stacking judiciary advisory councils, then that is leading the appointment process to get those in place. Maybe they are qualified, but maybe they lean in a certain political direction, and that has us worried as well.
Third, this is also the same government that has gone out of its way to make a large number of patronage appointments to Canada's judiciary, including the Prime Minister's former campaign manager in New Brunswick, a former president of the Conservative Party in Quebec and the party's former chief money raiser in Alberta. We sometimes call them bagmen, but in any event he was the chief money raiser in Alberta. It is funny he happened to end up appointed.
Therefore, we do have some worries.
However, I want to come back to the point that in general we have, even with these new appointments, a judicial process that is second to none in the world in terms of qualified people. It is a process that is independent of the political process and the executive branch of government as well. Our judicial process is seen around the world as among the best and included in that is the independence of the judiciary. One of the difficulties with our current court system is the cost.
I remember when I used to be involved in the farm movement and a friend of mine in the United States said of its justice system, “justice is justice, but it is just U.S.”. Only those with the economic ability to pay and political power, “just U.S.” meant them getting fairness under the system.
The previous government put in place the court challenges program, which provided federal government funding to organizations and groups, such as the Status of Women, so they could challenge decisions through the court system and get independent rulings and effective legislation on them. Therefore, those without economic power could get some justice in the system.
The leader of the Liberal Party spoke for a considerable time the other evening on a private member's bill to reintroduce the court challenges program to allow people without economic power to challenge the system. Members opposite were part and parcel of the Conservative government's cancellation of the court challenges program, and that was seen as disgraceful around the world. Many around the world looked at our court challenges program as a model to be emulated elsewhere and Canada was recognized in good stead around the world for it.
I hope those members have now seen the error of their ways, so to speak, and will look at the private member's bill of our leader to bring the court challenges program back. Even with the additional appointments, which are so important, it would make our court system work better and be fairer to all.
Although I agree with increasing the number of judges, as I said earlier, there are other points about which I am worried.
One of the benefits of our system is that if the Prime Minister does not like somebody in the system, he cannot up and fire that individual. We must retain that benefit. We have seen other areas where that has happened. Independent authorities have had highly qualified people fired because the Prime Minister wanted to silence their criticism.
The Conservative government is driven by ideology. I will give the House some examples of critics who have been silenced and fired because they did not allay themselves with the government's policy.
One example would be Adrian Measner, who was the CEO of the Canadian Wheat Board. The government fired Linda Keen, an independent authority in terms of nuclear regulations, who did not agree with the government. The government did it to Kingsley, Shapiro and Reid. Even through the appointments process to the board of directors of the Canadian Wheat Board, the government managed to do it to a lower level employee, Deanna Allen.