Justice Sopinka is another, as the member for Durham correctly points out.
While the purported objective of Bill C-203 is to ensure that nuances of oral argument are not lost in translation, I would submit that the likelihood of nuances being lost are much more likely to occur in the event that Bill C-203 were passed. If translators at the Supreme Court, who are among the best translators in Canada, make mistakes, then what is the likelihood that a judge hearing a highly technical, highly complicated legal argument in his or her second language might also miss nuances of oral argument? Common sense dictates that it is a certainty, and I submit it is a certainty that will occur much more regularly if Bill C-203 is passed.
Then there are serious practical issues. Would a test be administered to determine proficiency in English and French? Who would be the arbiter of that test? What would happen to the current nine members of the Supreme Court? Would they have to take a test? If they did not pass, what would then happen? That is just touching the surface of some of the practical issues that would be faced.
While Bill C-203 is well intentioned, it is a fundamentally flawed bill. I fully agree that being able to understand English and French is a highly valuable skill for a Supreme Court justice to have, and I believe that it should be a consideration that goes into determining whether an applicant should be appointed. However, linguistic characteristics must not trump experience, competence, and excellence in the law, not to mention the many other personal characteristics that are essential for a jurist to serve on the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court of Canada.
As I say, Bill C-203 is well intentioned, but the problem with it is that it searches for a problem that simply does not exist, to the detriment of appointing the most qualified candidates to the Supreme Court of Canada, and it is on that basis that I oppose Bill C-203.