Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Saint-Jean.
We cannot talk about Bill C-3 without first highlighting the outstanding work being done by the members of our justice system.
In both Quebec and Canada, as far as we can tell, the justice system meets society's needs quite well.
I feel this is worth mentioning, because the main, if not only, criticism we had about Bill C-3, the former Bill C-5, was that we needed to move carefully with regard to judicial independence. I was concerned about this, and I will come back to it later.
That being said, I think our judges are doing an outstanding job, but they need more tools. This is important in our society. This is not to criticize their work, but we need to make sure they have the necessary tools on hand to get the job done.
The justice system is the backbone of any society. It enables citizens to resolve all disputes together through the courts, instead of taking the law into their own hands. Both civil and criminal matters are brought to a judge, who is expected to be impartial and competent.
Bill C-3 does address the issue of judicial competence, and I think we should give it our full attention to ensure that it comes into force as soon as possible.
This bill was first introduced in 2017 by the Hon. Rona Ambrose, the interim leader of the Conservative Party at the time. The Bloc Québécois enthusiastically supported what was then Bill C-337. At one point, I even moved a motion in the House to have the Senate deal with Bill C-337 quickly so that it could come into force as quickly as possible; the motion passed unanimously.
Then Parliament was dissolved, which meant that Bill C-337 could not be brought into force and we had to start back at square one last fall after the 2019 election. The same bill was reintroduced as Bill C-5, and committee hearings began. It got through first and second reading. The committee heard from a number of witnesses, and that was when everyone realized that, although most civil society stakeholders thought the bill was fine, essential even, the judiciary had some concerns.
The Hon. Justice Kent and the Hon. Justice MacDonald, former chief justice of Nova Scotia, appeared before the committee and made suggestions. I liked their approach. They never criticized the entire bill but provided constructive criticism and warned us to be careful. We must not throw the baby out with the bathwater, as they say. There is some work to do on how justice is administered in cases of sexual assault. That is what Bill C-3 proposes to do, but let us be careful that we do not undermine the authority of the courts over society in our attempt to improve the judicial process.
As I said at the beginning of my speech, the justice system is very important in our society. If we cannot benefit from judicial independence, if we can no longer rely on the independence, impartiality and competency of our courts, it will have major negative consequences for our society. We cannot let that happen.
I urge us to proceed with caution, but to do that, we need to go back to committee as soon as possible. We need to take into account the criticism that we have heard. It seems to me that the suggestions of Justices Kent and MacDonald deserve our attention and that some amendments should likely be made.
I believe it was Justice Macdonald who talked about minor adjustments regarding how these matters should be dealt with. Rather than imposing obligations on the Canadian Judicial Council or on judges, tools should be brought in and the Canadian Judicial Council should be asked to support the measures and ensure that judges appointed to the various courts of federal jurisdiction have access to those tools to be better equipped to hear sexual assault cases.
That is not to say that they are not well equipped to hear them now, of course, but when it comes to sexual assault, I believe exceptional sensitivity is needed in the administration of justice.
The courts should take a special approach to these types of cases. We need to remember that testifying is usually a traumatizing experience for victims of sexual assault. They are reliving the tragic events that brought them to court. Judges need to be aware of this, and the bill will help judges and give them the tools to understand this reality and better deal with these kinds of cases.
The Bloc Québécois will support this bill, as we did in 2017 and as we did last year with Bill C-5. We look forward to working in committee and proposing necessary amendments to make Bill C-3 a bill that the Hon. Rona Ambrose would be proud of, that I would be proud of and that all parliamentarians in the House will be proud of.
This is an urgent matter, and it was urgent in 2017. I pointed out this urgency in a motion that passed unanimously and that called on the Senate to promptly adopt the bill. It was urgent in the spring. It is even more urgent now. Let us make sure that we do not end up with another election in the coming months, which would force us to start this process all over again.