Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the former minister of justice. I wonder if he could tell me what all of the following names have in common: Justice Bastarache, Justice Binnie, Justice Arbour, Justice LeBel, Justice Deschamps, Justice Fish, Justice Charron, and Justice Abella.
Let me help him out. They were all appointed between 1994 and 2005 by Liberal justice ministers, and none of them appeared before an ad hoc parliamentary committee to discuss their nominations.
In the cases of Justices Charron and Abella, my friend the member for Mount Royal was the minister of justice, and he appeared before an ad hoc parliamentary committee to discuss how and why they were chosen. However, the justices themselves did not appear before the committee.