Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Calgary Shepard for his contributions in the House.
With respect to judicial appointments, the Minister of Justice has appointed 235 judges thus far in each of the past few years. That is more judges than have been appointed by any minister of any political stripe in the last two decades, and it includes 34 judges in the member's province alone.
The member questions the ability to speed up the processes in compliance with the Jordan decision. I am going to put to him three statistics and I ask for his comments.
The first statistic is that an administration of justice offence is an offence such as breach of curfew. This type of offence has increased by 8% in the system since 2004. One in 10 incidents reported to the police involved an administration offence and four in 10 cases in adult criminal courts included at least one administration of justice offence.
Given those statistics would the member opposite agree with me that when we take those types of administration of justice charges, which are criminalized right now and are clogging up the system, and move them to a separate administrative judicial referral hearing, we are addressing the very backlog he has identified as a problem in this country for delivering justice more quickly?