House of Commons Hansard #90 of the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was judge.

Topics

Judges ActGovernment Orders

June 16th, 2022 / 12:40 p.m.

Liberal

Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question from my friend from La Pointe-de-l'Île.

We made some great changes to the process following the 2015 election. We created regional committees made up of Canadian Bar Association members and people who know the community and can tell the Department of Justice whether or not a person is qualified before their name is put on the judicial appointment list.

I followed the process launched in western Quebec, and I am very pleased that the Minister of Justice can now only appoint people who are on the lists approved by these committees. That said, the process can always be improved.

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12:40 p.m.

NDP

Heather McPherson NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB

Mr. Speaker, I always learn a great deal listening to my colleague and have enjoyed working in this place with him.

I agree with him that, when we stand here and listen to speeches from all members in this place, we hear the total agreement on moving this piece of legislation forward. What other things would he suggest we could do to encourage this bill to go forward as quickly as possible? Would he be willing, as a member of the government, to bring forward a unanimous consent motion so we could push this bill forward and give people the confidence that this Parliament can get things done?

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12:40 p.m.

Liberal

Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC

Mr. Speaker, I would certainly support a unanimous consent motion. Right now, it is up to all of us to speak to our House leaders and make sure they can agree to that. Maybe after question period, we will all be delighted to see one.

Again, we should all go and speak with our respective House leaders in the next few hours.

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12:40 p.m.

Conservative

Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite always does a great job on his speeches and, with his experience in the past, he always gives good detail.

I did like hearing that there are measures in this bill, other than just getting rid of a judge, that would address issues at a lower level. There are things like training and apologies in public. I wonder if the member could elaborate on the whole suite of options that are available there.

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12:40 p.m.

Liberal

Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC

Mr. Speaker, as the first female engineer elected to Parliament, my hon. colleague comes from private industry, as I do. Therefore, she knows that it would be ludicrous for the human resources department to be limited to firing an employee for any type of misconduct they happen to engage in at work. There is a whole gradation of potential sanctions ranging from a verbal warning to a written warning to suspension to an apology to training, which is obviously very important training. Now, instead of having to just remove a judge, there would be a three-member panel that would be able to recommend multiple options for a judge who has committed a lesser offence.

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12:45 p.m.

Conservative

Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Peace River—Westlock.

It is a pleasure to rise to speak to Bill C-9, which is an act that would create a complaint mechanism for judges. We have certainly heard from all sides today that everyone thinks this is a great idea. This is not to say judges do not do a good job, because we know we have great judges in this country who work hard, but as with any career discipline, there is always the odd thing going on that is not good.

I remember when I was the chair of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women we talked about some of the things that were happening. In one sexual assault case, a judge actually asked the complainant, “Why couldn’t you just keep your knees together?” In another sexual assault case, another judge said, “she was drunk” in the taxi.

Rona Ambrose brought forward Bill C-337 to try to get at this issue of judges who do not have experience in sexual assault presiding over those cases. Although that bill unfortunately did not make it through under her private member's bill, the government brought it back, and we passed it earlier in the session. This would offer judges training, and in fact, it would offer lawyers who want to be judges training as well. That is the kind of remedy we want to see.

I was very pleased to hear the member for Mount Royal, who just spoke, talk about what this bill would allow. Other than just the extreme option of getting rid of a judge for whatever behaviour was complained about, there is a whole realm of possibilities, including verbal warnings, letter warnings, public apologies, training and multiple other options. This is something very good about this bill.

I do have a concern about the state of judges in our country since the Liberal government was elected. I started in 2015, and at that time we were missing I think 60 judges who needed to be appointed. Because of that, and because the Jordan decision, there were numerous examples of murderers and rapists who went free because there were not enough judges to handle the workload in a timely fashion.

There was an attempt made to put in a process. The government wanted to increase the diversity of the judges being selected, which is great, because one of the things that will make for a healthier democracy and rule of law is to have diverse thought and diverse representation of the population.

Unfortunately, what happened is the government used the Liberal fundraising database to figure out which judges should be picked from the lawyer pool. There were also fundraisers going on with the minister of justice at the time, which caused a big scandal because lawyers were paying $500 to meet her, and they all wanted to become judges. We know that is certainly not in keeping with conflict of interest rules in the House. The scandal went on for quite a while.

It is important to have diversity of thought with judges so they can check one another. If people are all in a group and they think together, it can be a bad thing. We have seen some of the Supreme Court decisions that came out recently that have caused concern across the country, such as the one that says, if a person is intoxicated, it could be a defence for murder, sexual assault, etc. Canadians in general would reject that and say no. The person is the one who chose to keep drinking or doing drugs until they became that intoxicated, and there needs to be an ownership of the behaviour. Those judges all together did not have enough diversity of thought for somebody to say that decision might not be a good thing.

I would suggest, from a Conservative perspective, that when somebody has killed multiple people, consecutive sentencing gave a lot of comfort to victims. The Supreme Court decision on that is another example. Parliament has a duty to review those decisions and have the discussions about whether that is really where we want to go on those topics. The whole purpose of having judges is that they are the executors of the rule of law in our nation.

I am very concerned that, in the last seven years, we are not seeing more rule of law. We are seeing more people committing crimes. The crime rates are increasing, including gun crime and violent crime. However, when I look at the response from the government, it looks like we are seeing a continual erosion of the rule of law.

The member who spoke previously mentioned that I am the first female engineer in the House, and we have an expression in the engineering world about a frog in a pot. Gradually the temperature in the pot increases until eventually we boil the frog, but the frog is not able to sense that the temperature is going up because it is so incremental. I would argue, with respect to the rule of law in Canada, the temperature is going up.

We had Bill C-75, which reduced the sentencing to fines or less than two years of time in jail for crimes such as abduction of a person under the age of 16, abduction of a person under the age of 14, arson for fraudulent purposes, marriage under 16 and participation in the activity of a terrorist group. There are a number of offences there, and I did not see the justification for that. We have heard from police chiefs that, although in some cases they agreed, in many cases there are serious crimes happening that now have only a slap on the wrist, which is not sending the right message about the rule of law and the importance of it.

In this parliamentary session, we now have Bill C-5 coming forward, which would remove mandatory minimums on robbery with a firearm; extortion with a firearm; discharging a firearm with intent; using a firearm in the commission of offences; trafficking or possession for the purpose of trafficking; importing, exporting, or possession of serious drugs; and production of these serious drugs, which are killing thousands of Canadians. Also, Bill C-5 would allow some of these sentences to be put down to house arrest, including that of sexual assault.

Somebody could victimize someone in their community and then serve the time there. I do not think that is something that we should leave to the discretion of judges, when we have seen in the past a judge ask, “couldn't you just keep your knees together?” There is a naivete if we think we can leave it to chance. Yes, in the majority of cases, judges will judge with wisdom, but it is the every now and again that we want to prevent and what our laws should prevent.

Abduction of a person under 14 could become a house arrest sentence. This is unbelievable. We have a huge human trafficking issue in this country, and this not only sends the wrong message, but it is also not going to fix things because, when people are left with a potential house arrest, those who are committing crimes can commit them out of their house. It is the same thing for someone trafficking drugs who gets house arrest. How convenient is that for people to stop by and pick up drugs?

These things make no sense to me, and so I am very concerned when I look at the erosion of our rule of law. At the same time, there is an erosion of protection for victims. We had Bill C-28 in the previous Parliament on victim surcharge. It used to be that there was some recompense made for victims who had suffered and had to travel distances to go to parole hearings and that kind of thing, but that was taken away.

This is a soft-on-crime government, and while I support Bill C-9 because when judges do not get it right we need to fix that, but I am very concerned that we are having this continual erosion of the rule of law. We have heard many speeches in the House that have said that there is a high rate of reoffending. People are committing crimes, getting out, committing them again and being put back in, and there really is no rehabilitation happening. That is not to say that there should not be, but the situation today is that there is not. If we know that people are going to reoffend and go out on the street, we have to protect the public, and we have a duty to do that.

The mechanism in the bill is to make sure that judges are doing their due diligence. We would have mechanisms, not just an extreme one, but progressions, that would allow us to take corrective action and manage the judicial system to ensure its integrity. This will preserve the rule of law, although the concerns I have expressed do remain.

Judges ActGovernment Orders

12:55 p.m.

NDP

Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, and I want to go back to some of the comments she made at the beginning of her speech.

We have seen some horrific judgements that women who suffered sexual assault have faced in the courts, with judges who have had some horrific opinions, not judgements but opinions, on the women. However, Rona Ambrose did come forward about the need to have judges properly trained so they actually understood these files in reference to sexual assault and abuse against women.

I would ask my hon. colleague if she feels that the mechanisms within the bill would allow us to address some of the serious problems we have with judges who just do not understand the sexual assault culture facing women.

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12:55 p.m.

Conservative

Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON

Mr. Speaker, the reality is that the bill that Rona Ambrose brought forward had training as the main measure, training so that judges would understand sexual assault.

With Bill C-9, we actually have a plethora of things that can be done to match the severity of the situation, whether it was an idle comment or a photograph that was taken prior to the sentence being made public. I think there is enough flexibility in this bill, and that is always going to be better. We do not want someone to be fired on a first offence, but we want to make sure there are a suite of actions that can be taken so that the punishment essentially fits the crime.

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12:55 p.m.

Conservative

Tracy Gray Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC

Mr. Speaker, one of the things my colleague talked about was the erosion of the rule of law at the same time as the erosion of the protection of victims. We have seen, time and again, a real soft-on-crime approach by the Liberal government.

I want to bring this to her attention. In my community of Kelowna—Lake Country, the City of Kelowna just released a report, a couple of weeks ago, called “Community Confidence in Justice: Advocacy Paper”. It talks about the increase in crime in our community, and it has a number of different suggestions and advocacy on protecting the public and moving forward with different policy ideas and guidelines.

Is the member seeing a similar increase in crime where she is from, such that we really need to look at both the rule of law and the protection of victims in her community as well?

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12:55 p.m.

Conservative

Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am very sad to report that Sarnia—Lambton has the same homicide rate as Toronto. This is something that has escalated. When I first moved there, it was rare to hear of a murder in Sarnia—Lambton. We have had multiple murders already this year, and it is related to the drug trade.

That is why I am specifically concerned that we are bringing forward bills in this House that would allow drug traffickers and people who produce drugs to maybe get a house arrest. We already have a revolving door and police officers are tearing their hair out. They risk their lives and these people are arrested, and then they are out on the streets, sometimes the same day, in my community.

We do not understand why the judges are making those calls. Obviously, the Criminal Code does give them sway to put these people away. I understand that in many cases it is about mental health or addiction, but we do not have any long-term recovery beds. We do not have enough treatment. I do not know when we are going to start putting the treatment in place, so that we can start treating the addictions and the root cause of the trauma, instead of having these revolving doors that result in violence in our communities.

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12:55 p.m.

Winnipeg North Manitoba

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Mr. Speaker, the member made reference at the beginning of her comments to appointments and the fact that she did not feel we were appointing judges fast enough and it was causing murderers to go free. I am wondering if she could cite any individuals who committed murder and actually went free because of not having a judge in place.

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12:55 p.m.

Conservative

Marilyn Gladu Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON

Mr. Speaker, that was at the time when Jody Wilson-Raybould was the justice minister. I remember one member specifically, and there are records in Hansard. I would encourage people to go back and look at Hansard because there were specific cases cited, rape cases and murder cases, where people did go free due to Jordan's principle at that time.

Judges ActGovernment Orders

1 p.m.

Conservative

Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB

Mr. Speaker, I join with my colleagues in discussing Bill C-9 today. I am appreciative of the bill and the fact that it would grant the premise that we have been advocating for a very long time, and that Liberals have been arguing against for a very long time, that judges need to be held accountable. There needs to be a remedy for egregious actions on the part of judges.

I believe in the fallen nature of man and that the dividing line between good and evil runs through the heart of a person. I do not think anybody is above doing wrong or evil things, and we must all fight against that all the time. That stands for everybody, including judges. Judges can get it wrong and sometimes do evil things. Those things happen in the fallen world we live in. For that reason, there need to be accountability mechanisms for all individuals.

Accountability is baked into many of the things we do. It is baked into democracy and there are the checks and balances of democracy. In this place, we have one of the most obvious checks and balances, which is the vote when it comes to getting re-elected or being elected. We run on our record and on what we plan to do, and that is an accountability mechanism. That is being accountable to the people back home.

There are other checks and balances in our system. We have the Constitution, and all the laws we bring in this place must be checked against our Constitution, making sure that individual freedoms and liberties are maintained. We have provincial jurisdiction and federal jurisdiction, and both of those are guarded jealously. That is one of the checks and balances in our system. Then we have a thing called judicial independence, where politicians and the political sphere are not supposed to influence judges, so to speak. However, every now and then judges will have personal failures, where whatever they have done is beyond the pale of public activity and they would be deemed unfit to be judges any longer. This bill puts out a mechanism in order to deal with that.

I will read some of the reasons for removal that this bill lays out: “(a) infirmity; (b) misconduct; (c) failure in the due execution of judicial office; (d) the judge is in a position that a reasonable, fair-minded and informed observer would consider to be incompatible with the due execution of judicial office.” I think this is a fair bill, and it would put in place a due process for the removal of judges from their position.

As I said earlier, I am appreciative of this bill because it grants the premise that judges need to be held accountable. I do not know about others, but where I come from there is a growing dissatisfaction or mistrust, or “lack of confidence” is probably the best term, for folks back home around the judicial system and holding criminals to account. We are starting to see this spill over into urban areas, where criminals operate with impunity. They steal things in broad daylight and commit acts of violence in broad daylight, disobeying the law in general and violating local communities. In rural Canada, theft is a real challenge, and it is somewhat a crime of opportunity. Where I live, the police getting to my door is a matter of perhaps hours, so criminals can do their criminal activity and be long gone before the police show up.

While I think this bill is an important starting piece, there is an entire sentiment that the current Liberal government drives, which starts perhaps with its tacit support of the “Defund the Police” movement, but also this general idea that the justice system will allow people to get out of jail more easily and will not penalize people. These kinds of things, which we often hear from the government, have led to the police not being able to make arrests, and when they do make arrests they are not able to get convictions, which becomes a major challenge. It demoralizes the police, the lack of political support from movements like “Defund the Police”. It undermines the political support police think they have.

They know that if they are going to pursue criminals, they need to have public support for their actions, and we are seeing more and more the police telling folks that they probably will not get a conviction or that they will have to go through all that effort and the criminal would be back out in six months. If what is missing from the victim's place is a small thing, they are not going to put the resources toward that, because they have a major case they are working on and they are diverting the resources to that, as they are likely to get a conviction there. Individuals' lives are devastated. When people come home to find that their fridge, washing machine and dishwasher are missing, that basically all of the appliances in their house have been stolen, it is a violating thing. To have somebody come into their house and steal things like that is unnerving. Perhaps it is not a great monetary loss, but it is extremely disconcerting for the folks who are missing those things.

Pollsters will track this kind of thing, the trust in our institutions, and generally Canadians' trust has been going down over the last seven years. We saw that under Conservative governments, trust in institutions, trust that institutions were doing what people expected them to do, was going up. Now we have seen a dramatic decrease in the trust in institutions, which bears itself out in two ways. One is that now people do not even call the police when their stuff goes missing. I hear that over and over again. People say that the police cannot do anything about it and therefore they do not even call. The other side of the coin is that criminals operate with increasingly brazen activity. We saw it in Calgary recently: two cars blazing down the road, shooting at each other while driving down the road, with no apparent fear that the police would show up, apprehend them and put an end to this firefight. It ended in the tragic death of a mother of five. That was in Calgary, just recently.

Folks will now come into rural yards and start stealing things. When the homeowner shows up and asks what they are doing, they say they are stealing things. He says, “I am standing right here”, and they just say, “What are you going to do about it?” We have that increasingly. We have just brazen activity by criminals because they see the lack of the system's ability to hold them to account, and therefore operate with complete impunity and brazenness that we have never seen before.

I would say that in my own life, I have witnessed the deterioration of trust in the community, trust in general. When I was growing up in my community, no one had a chain-link fence, no one had a gate at the end of the driveway, but these sorts of things are more and more common.

I lay this at the feet of the current government and the fact that it does not take this seriously. It does not provide the political support and tacitly supports movements like “Defund the Police”, which undermines our way of life, our quality of life and our ability to live peacefully in this country, and has led to a deterioration of the interactions we have as a society.

I look forward to questions on this.

Judges ActGovernment Orders

1:10 p.m.

NDP

Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC

Mr. Speaker, I want to continue with the theme of what we have been hearing about this piece of legislation, Bill C-9. There seems to be broad support for it. It seems to be something that would be a good step forward at least. Everybody agrees on that.

It has had a tortured history. I would say the government has been rather inept at bringing this measure forward, but now that it is here before us and we are facing the end of the parliamentary session at the end of the month, I am wondering if the member would comment on the possibility of moving this bill forward quickly, perhaps even with unanimous consent, so that we could get on to some of the more important issues facing us here.

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1:10 p.m.

Conservative

Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB

Mr. Speaker, I am in favour of moving this bill along quickly, although I am not in favour of shortcutting the process.

I have experienced that in this place. I have seen bills moved forward very quickly, only to have groups come forward later on, saying they never had the opportunity to present at committee and that they had an amendment they thought was needed for that particular bill, but because the system was short-circuited, they never got to present the amendment. Those amendments never did come forward, and then we had to put forward a private member's bill, new legislation, in order to amend that piece of legislation.

While I am hopeful that this bill will pass and pass soon, we should not be pushing it too fast, because Canadians will want to weigh in. We need to have the ability for the bill in front of us to be brought up in Canadian awareness and get feedback from civil society and all Canadians.

I look forward to having this bill at committee and to hearing from Canadians on what they have to say about it.

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1:10 p.m.

Green

Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC

Mr. Speaker, I normally do not want to see bills rushed through this place. The hon. member for Peace River—Westlock may know that I supported the Conservative vote on not rushing Bill C-11 through in the way that it was rushed through earlier this week.

However, in this case, this bill has had an unusual course. In the last Parliament, it actually started on the Senate side, so it has already been studied in the Senate. On top of that, of course, there were deep consultations with the Canadian Bar Association and others in developing the legislation. On many issues, Canadians are inadequately consulted, but maybe if it does come forward, I would hope that we do find a way to move it quickly, because it should have been passed probably about five years ago, if not 15 years ago.

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1:10 p.m.

Conservative

Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB

Mr. Speaker, I would note that we are still waiting on a Canadian Bar Association response to this particular legislation. I know that I am looking forward to their response in particular. In that regard, I would say I think we have to bring this bill to committee.

However, I want to reiterate I am very appreciative that this bill grants the premise that there needs to be judge accountability in this country. I would say that the bill is a very good start in keeping judges accountable for their conduct. I also look forward to having discussions with colleagues around bringing forward some other level of judicial accountability for judgments that do take place. I know we have the notwithstanding clause, and that has been and continues to be a decent check on judgments that we get from judges. I look forward to continuing those discussions with my colleagues in this place.

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1:10 p.m.

Conservative

Tracy Gray Conservative Kelowna—Lake Country, BC

Mr. Speaker, the member had spoken about Canadians losing trust in their institutions. One example we could look at is the CMHC, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Canada's national housing agency. It has one single reason for existence, and that is to make housing more affordable for everyone in Canada. Of course, it has failed miserably in that regard.

We also know that through the justice system, we have a revolving door. Legislation like this that we see here today, and also the private member's bill that I tabled this week dealing with addiction treatment in penitentiaries, could help with the revolving door. Could the member comment on those types of initiatives, and whether they could help with restoring confidence in our justice system?

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1:15 p.m.

Conservative

Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Kelowna—Lake Country for her advocacy around addictions. I know that is likely where a lot of the issues that we face in this country come from, so we have to work to ensure that we have a society that can treat addiction and does not just put addicted people on palliative care and basically say we will provide them with the drugs they need rather than trying to end those addictions and bring forward a country that is positive and hopeful.

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1:15 p.m.

Winnipeg North Manitoba

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to address the House virtually today.

There are a number of thoughts that I would like to share with respect to this piece of legislation. It is legislation that has been in the works for a considerable amount of time. As much as I have been enjoying some of the questions and answers, especially when the Conservatives are being pushed as to when they are going to look at it or whether they would consider the passage of the legislation. Just given the context of what the official opposition members are saying, I do not anticipate that the bill will be passing before summer. I think the Conservatives have some spin notes that they want to try to leave on this particular legislation.

The biggest one that comes to my mind is the issue of “soft on crime”. It is especially members of the Conservative hard-right element who like to say that they are much harder on crime, that government needs to be tough on crime and that if it is not a Conservative government, it is soft on crime. Whether it makes sense or not, that is the line that the Conservatives like to give because of public perception.

That said, the bill will pass when it will pass, ultimately. I am hopeful that, as we can sense, the majority of the House see the value in Bill C-9, because it is something that is needed.

I want to start by making a couple of observations from some of the stakeholders. I want to do that this time around because I really do respect our judicial system as one of the fundamental pillars of our democracy. Our rule of law, our judicial system and the idea of independence are held dear by, I would like to think, all members of the House.

For that reason, I thought it was important to start off with a quote. It is from the Right Hon. Richard Wagner, Chief Justice of Canada and chairperson of the Canadian Judicial Council. He stated:

Over the past few years, the Council has consistently called for new legislation to be tabled in order to improve the process by which concerns about judicial conduct are reviewed. The efforts of members of Council to develop proposals in this regard have been fruitful, and we appreciate the openness with which the Minister of Justice has engaged the Council in his consultations.

I will go to another quote from the Canadian Judicial Council. It states:

While the Council will take some time to carefully review the proposed amendments, we are confident that these reforms will bring about much needed efficiency and transparency to the judicial conduct review process.

I wanted to start with those opening quotes because of the respect that I have for judicial independence. I also recognize that there has been a great deal of work, whether by the minister or by administration or by civil servants. They have worked very closely with the many different stakeholders while at the same time respecting the importance of judicial independence. That is why, when I look at the legislation—and I concur with some of the comments being made by my New Democratic Party colleagues and Green Party members, who seem to support the legislation and its speedy passage—I would like to think that the bill itself should not be controversial. It is actually fairly straightforward. There will be other opportunities for the opposition members to try to score their political points, if I could put it that way.

I do think there would have been a great deal of value in seeing Bill C-9 at least pass through second reading so that it could go to committee stage, possibly during the summer, when feedback could be heard from the public and experts, with the idea of coming back in the fall for report stage and third reading.

The Conservative members who spoke before me were interesting. I picked up on two comments; one was the issue of “soft on crime”, which I have already referenced and maybe will go into a little more later, but they also brought up the issue of appointments of judges. I was somewhat taken aback by some of the comments that were put on the record.

We were being criticized because we did not make appointments shortly after being elected into government, as we were reviewing and establishing a more independent, apolitical, transparent appointment process to ensure that our judicial system would be that much more transparent. Yes, there might have been some delays in those appointments, but they were taking the extreme position that murderers went free because of some delays in appointments. I would welcome and challenge the Conservative members to cite specific examples of someone who not only allegedly murdered but did murder an individual and ultimately, because they could not get a day in court, were let go without any charges being laid in that situation. I would be very much interested in a name. If they could provide me with one, they can always send it to my P9 email or raise it inside the House.

The member went on to talk about Jody Wilson-Raybould, being very critical of her for not making appointments and implying in the comments that she would only make an appointment if the person donated to the party. Again, those were very extreme statements being made by the Conservative Party. It is not fair. It is interesting how they seem to have forgiven the past—at least, most of the Conservative caucus has—in regard to Jody Wilson-Raybould, but I remember the allegations a number of years ago on that front.

It is important to look at the appointments that have actually been made. The government has made somewhere in the neighbourhood of 400 appointments since 2016. If we do the comparison, I would love to hear the numbers from the previous administration. When it comes to this administration, out of the hundreds of appointments to our judicial system, 55% have been women. I would love to hear a comparison with the previous 10 years under Stephen Harper.

About 3% of our appointments, or marginally just above that, were indigenous. That is important to recognize. Over 10% are visible minorities. The LGBTQ2 appointments are over 5%. Not only are we identifying ideal, competent, incredible individuals, but as a result of a more transparent, depoliticized appointment process, I believe that overall the appointments are more effective in better reflecting what our society looks like today.

On both of those points, whether it is judges and the appointment of judges or the issue of the Conservatives being soft on crime and saying the government is not tough enough on crime, I would challenge the Conservatives to prove their points, not necessarily on this legislation, but on other pieces of legislation so we can ultimately see Bill C-9 pass.

It is important to recognize that we do need to see a balance. We have the fundamental pillar of our judicial independence and it is important there be a high level of confidence held by the public in the administration of justice. I believe the legislation we are looking at deals with that in a very fair fashion.

The amendments will ultimately allow for the Canadian Judicial Council to continue to preside over the process proposed in the legislation. This would start with a three-person review panel ultimately deciding to investigate a complaint of misconduct. In some situations, if the complaint is serious enough, it might even warrant dismissal or removal from the bench. In situations like that, it could be referred to a separate five-person panel.

In the first case, it would be strictly a three-person review panel made up of CJC members. A judge and a layperson could impose sanctions such as public apologies and continuing education.

The current process has turned out, in many ways, to be exceptionally costly at times, and equally as important, it is not very timely. We have seen situations where it could take years before anything is actually concluded.

That is the reason our judicial system is saying that we need to make changes. Today, judges facing possible removal from office because of serious allegations of misconduct have several opportunities throughout the process to launch these judicial reviews. However, as I indicated, the process in some cases can be too long and can be at a fairly significant cost.

Replacing the process through which the Canadian Judicial Council reviews the conduct of a federally appointed judge is the essence of what the legislation is proposing to do. It establishes a new process for reviewing allegations of misconduct that are not serious enough to warrant a judge's removal from office and makes changes to the process by which recommendations regarding removal from office can be made by the Minister of Justice.

The new process would allow for the imposition of sanctions for misconduct which, while not serious enough to warrant removal, may warrant sanctions that are quite different. The current process does not allow for such sanctions. The member for Mount Royal highlighted some examples. Where a judge's actions have been deemed to have offended something and there needs to be a consequence for the actions, there are more opportunities for different types of consequences.

We could see anything ranging from verbal warnings to written warnings, to suspensions or public apologies. We could even see additional training being required, and ultimately, of course, judges being released. This legislation enables a suite of actions that could be imposed on a judge, given a certain behaviour or comment that is made publicly.

Not only have we heard today, but we have also heard it in the past. We have had private members' bills. I think of Rona Ambrose. She talked about educating judges, particularly in the area of rape victims. Her piece of legislation ultimately received support from all areas of the House. Parliamentarians from all political stripes recognized the need to have some form of educational programming for newly appointed judges to take things into consideration. In fact, my daughter, who is a local representative in the province of Manitoba, had also taken that particular initiative after hearing about what Rona Ambrose had done.

Ultimately, the government pushed that legislation through in the years that followed after Ms. Ambrose left the House of Commons, but we attribute it to Rona and we attribute it to the fact that there is a universal desire for that training.

It was not that long ago when we had another private member's bill, one from one of my colleagues from Montreal. There was a great deal of effort by members on all sides of the House to see that legislation, Bill C-233, which is still before the House today, pass second reading and go to committee. It came out of third reading because of that desire.

For those who are not familiar, Ms. Ambrose's piece of legislation is recognized as Keira's law for good reason. I will quote from an article, “When I brought forward the evidence about abuse of Mr. Brown, we had a judge, for example, who said that domestic violence is not relevant to parenting and, 'I'm going to ignore it.'”

Periodically statements come out of our judicial system that call into question the public confidence. That is one of the reasons it is so important that we pass this legislation. It recognizes that our independent judicial system and our judges, who we do need to respect, can make mistakes. Obviously, a vast majority of judgments are done in a way in which they meet the expectations of Canadians, but on occasion, when that does not happen, there needs to be a more effective mechanism to ensure there is an appropriate consequence. This legislation would enable some variation of consequences for judges, at times, who cross the line.

I have appreciated the opportunity to share a few thoughts and will be more than happy to answer any questions.

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1:35 p.m.

Conservative

Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON

Mr. Speaker, one of the important changes in the legislation is the inclusion of the review and hearing panel system. I was wondering if the member could tell everyone what the difference between a review and a hearing panel is.

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1:35 p.m.

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB

Mr. Speaker, I would emphasize that one of the aspects of the legislation that I do like is that we are finally going to be seeing a layperson as part of the process. Having that put into place is quite important and is an important aspect of the legislation.

I am not as confident in giving the type of detailed answer the member is specifically looking for.

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1:35 p.m.

Bloc

Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Winnipeg North for his speech. His ability to speak in depth on so many diverse topics will never cease to amaze me. I have sincere respect for his work and the way he carries it out.

That said, why is it so urgent for the government to act on Bill C‑9 at this time?

Given all the other urgent issues that the government should feel are priorities, particularly inflation, why is Bill C‑9 being dealt with at this time?

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1:35 p.m.

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB

Mr. Speaker, the problem with the House of Commons is there is never enough time to have the types of debates that we would like to have on everything that comes before us. That is why we often have to sit beyond our normal sitting hours.

The Government of Canada has a legislative agenda. It also has budgetary measures. When we put them together and look at the priorities of the government, whether it is the pandemic or inflation, as we are all concerned about, all of these public policy issues continue to move forward, led by the Prime Minister and the cabinet.

At the end of the day, a well-functioning government has the ability to deal with a wide variety of issues, always keeping our focus on the issues that are most important to Canadians. It does not necessarily mean that we just let Bill C-9 go nowhere. It is an important piece of legislation. We have been provided this opportunity to bring in Bill C-9 because of a collapse in debate last night.

We have not lost any focus on what the important issues are for Canadians in particular, whether it is the pandemic, the war in Europe or inflation, which are all matters of great concern.

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1:35 p.m.

NDP

Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

Mr. Speaker, I have heard it said that the most valuable commodity in this place is time, and here we are debating a bill for several hours. I have been here for most of it and heard a fair bit of repetition, but also some strong agreement that we want to move this forward. I wonder whether my colleague knows if there have been conversations about moving this bill forward by unanimous consent. We have seen that done before. Even on contentious issues, such as conversion therapy, we have managed to expedite the process.

In the interest of moving on to issues that really require more debate than something that was debated in the previous Parliament, I would ask my colleague if he has made an effort within his party to expedite this process.