François Choquette

[Saint-Lucien Cranberry Festival, September 29th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise today in the House to invite Canadians to participate in the very first edition of the Saint-Lucien cranberry festival, which will take place on October 7 and 8. Events include cranberry farm tours, a country market, entertainment, games, activities, and more.

This summer, as I was doing my usual tour of the municipalities, I visited several cranberry farms and I was pleased to note what a vibrant community Saint-Lucien is.

I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate the organizing committee of this event, which is led by the president of the cranberry festival, David Gauthier, as well as the municipality of Saint-Lucien. This wonderful citizen-driven initiative promotes the development and vitality of their community. In addition, the participation of residents of Saint-Lucien will no doubt contribute to the success of this festival.

Come and discover our region. I hope you will join us at the cranberry festival. Come have some fun at this unique event in our lovely region, the greater Drummond area.

[Official Languages, September 26th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice. I know him to be a very good person who does good work. Unfortunately, he did not answer my questions and that is very disappointing.

The NDP is very proud of its work on official languages. We are the ones who introduced Bill C-419 to ensure that all officers of Parliament are bilingual. That is thanks to former hon. member Alexandrine Latendresse. We are very proud of that bill.

We continued to work very hard. As I said, Yvon Godin worked very hard. We are the only ones who want to pass a bill to ensure that Supreme Court justices are bilingual.

Unfortunately, my hon. colleague did not answer my question. I would like to give him one last chance because this is my last attempt for today.

Does he at least support the recommendations of the latest report by the Commissioner of Official Languages tabled in 2013 regarding access to justice and judges in superior courts?

[Official Languages, September 26th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise again in the House this evening to discuss my bill, Bill C-203, an act to amend the Supreme Court Act (understanding the official languages).

I previously asked my hon. colleague a question about whether the Liberals plan to pass this bill, which calls for all Supreme Court justices to be bilingual. This summer, the Prime Minister of Canada announced a process for appointing justices to the Supreme Court. This process is to be open and transparent and will require justices to be bilingual, which is excellent news.

The NDP has been calling for this since 2008. It has really been a key issue for us. My colleague, the former member for Acadie—Bathurst, Yvon Godin, introduced two separate bills on this since 2008. Then in 2010, he introduced another bill regarding a bilingual requirement for justices, and the Liberals voted in favour of it.

Unfortunately, however, after that bill went to the Senate, the Conservatives let it die on the Order Paper. We were really disappointed, which is why we are introducing it again.

Now that the Liberals are in power, we expected that they would support and pass the bill introduced to ensure the bilingualism of judges.

Everyone supports this bill, including the Commissioner of Official Languages, the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada, the Barreau du Québec, and Jean-Marc Fournier, the Quebec minister responsible for Canadian relations, who said, “Enshrining bilingualism in law is necessary”.

Does everyone believe that the bilingualism of Supreme Court judges must be enshrined in law? No, the Liberals do not. That is really sad. We are asking the Liberals why they do not want to support a bill to ensure the bilingualism of Supreme Court justices in perpetuity.

Previous Conservative governments appointed unilingual English judges and this created serious problems with respect to the interpretation of certain rulings. However, under the Official Languages Act, the official languages have equality in fact. This equality in fact must exist in the highest court as well.

What are the Liberals talking about to avoid voting? They are talking about the Nadon case. Let us discuss this case, then. I asked jurists in this Parliament about it. I asked them whether the Nadon case prevented bilingualism from being one of the criterion for the appointment of judges. The answer was no, the Nadon case did not prevent it. In fact, to determine whether it is constitutional or not, we would have to ask the Supreme Court for an opinion.

For that reason I asked the Liberals why they are refusing to ask for a Supreme Court opinion. If they have opinions that run counter to those of the House of Commons jurists, they should provide them. To date, we have not seen any legal opinions to the effect that bilingualism as an appointment criterion for Supreme Court justices is unconstitutional.

If the Liberals have any such opinions, they should produce them.

[Official Languages, September 26th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, again, the Liberal government is being lax on an issue involving official languages.

Last week, the Commissioner of Official Languages expressed concern over the situation at Parks Canada, which is struggling to provide services in both official languages, French and English, equally. What is more, we are still waiting for a response from the government about the level of bilingualism of the RCMP officers on the Hill.

When is the minister going to enforce the Official Languages Act?

[Business of Supply, September 22nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question and his very interesting and informed analysis. I commend the Liberal government for agreeing to change the composition of the special committee on electoral reform to make it proportional to the number of votes cast. I tip my hat to the government because this shows great openness in the context of an extremely important democratic reform initiative.

As my colleague said, the main problem with the current system is that the votes do not count because there is no proportionality. This prevents us from having the most informed debate possible.

The consultations I held this summer in my riding indicated that people want our system to have some element of proportionality. We will see the results of this tour on democratic reform. I hope that the Liberal government will have the courage to put a system in place that addresses people's concerns.

[Business of Supply, September 22nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice for his question.

Unfortunately, it seems that the parliamentary secretary thinks that he will be in power forever. However, the Liberal government will not be in office forever and policies change. We want something more lasting, and a bill provides an additional safeguard.

When the NDP introduced the bill on bilingual officers of the House through my colleague Alexandrine Latendresse, we were all happy to support it. We passed that bill to ensure that officers of the House would be bilingual.

Since the Supreme Court is a last recourse for Canadians, we need to ensure that its judges are bilingual. The Quebec minister responsible for Canadian relations, Jean-Marc Fournier, is calling for the appointment of bilingual judges to be enshrined in law, as is the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne, the Barreau du Québec, and lawyers from New Brunswick and other parts of Atlantic Canada.

Yes, we need to put this in a bill because the Liberals will not always be in power. People need to properly understand both official languages, and the Liberals' definition of bilingualism is not quite adequate.

[Business of Supply, September 22nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue.

I am pleased to rise in the House today to talk about the appointment of Supreme Court justices, an issue of such importance that I even introduced a bill calling for these justices to be bilingual. I will have the opportunity to talk about that in my speech.

The motion calls on the government to take into account regional differences when appointing judges to the Supreme Court and to respect the custom of regional representation. I think that everyone in the House of Commons agrees with that, myself included.

The announcement that the Prime Minister of Canada made this summer caused much disappointment. Of course, we are happy that a committee has been set up to analyze judges' legal expertise and to ensure that they are bilingual and that they fully understand both official languages. Everyone was very pleased and the Prime Minister's announcement was met with praise on all sides.

However, my leader, the leader of the NDP, went to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to ask the minister what it means to be a bilingual judge. Does it mean that the judge can speak both official languages? The Minister of Justice vaguely answered that she did not know exactly what it means and that it may mean being able to understand but not necessarily speak both languages. That is very disappointing, and it is not at all the bilingualism that we expect of a Supreme Court justice.

We are very concerned about the Minister of Justice's response. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice will address this situation, because it is unacceptable. We must consider what the Commissioner of Official Languages asked for. He asked that justices have the language skills required not only to understand French and English and to speak these languages, but also to understand the legal terminology every Supreme Court judge should master.

Like the Conservatives, we believe that customary regional representation must be maintained, and that is why we are talking about the Atlantic provinces now. We also believe that judges must be bilingual and that there should be legislation to that effect. I will talk about that shortly. Most importantly, this government must not make the same mistakes the Conservatives made.

Unfortunately, two unilingual anglophone justices were appointed. Other blunders included appointing a unilingual anglophone officer of Parliament. The Liberals made similar mistakes, such as appointing a unilingual anglophone House leader and a unilingual anglophone Speaker of the Senate. The Liberals have had their share of problems and have not always made the right choices.

That is why I want to talk about my bill, Bill C-203, which would amend the Supreme Court Act and introduce a new requirement for judges appointed to the Supreme Court to understand both official languages in accordance with the language skills criteria defined by the Commissioner of Official Languages.

This is extremely important because, when it comes to appointing Supreme Court justices, regional representation is certainly a factor, but we must not forget that, under the Official Languages Act, both languages have equal status. Neither is superior to the other; both are equal.

In our courts, particularly in the highest court in the land, it is to be expected that both official languages should be equal, but that cannot happen if the judges are not bilingual.

We have heard stories, and I am going to share one with you. This really happened, and it is disturbing.

A few years ago, a justice began making his argument in French before the other justices present. The presiding Supreme Court justice suddenly asked him if he could slow down because the interpreters could not keep up. I should point out that one has a limited amount of time to present one's argument. If justices cannot present their arguments at a normal, regular pace, or if they have to slow down, of course this can be problematic.

The interpreters do a wonderful job. I want to commend their work, because I know we also have interpreters working in the House of Commons. We also did a study on the Translation Bureau, and I want to emphasize that the bureau as a whole is doing an excellent job, much like our interpreters. However, as the name states, there can at times be some interpretation of what is said. They do the best they can to interpret the message properly, but it cannot be a word-for-word translation of every point in every sentence. In any case, that would not make sense. Interpretation is a magnificent art, but of course it is the art of interpreting the message.

When faced with something as important as any matter before the Supreme Court of Canada, that is, something of such gravity and critical importance to the entire country, there is no room for even the smallest mistake or tiniest difference between what is said and how it is understood. That is why it is extremely important that all justices understand both official languages.

I want to point out that I introduced Bill C-203 to amend the legislation on appointing judges in order to ensure that they are bilingual. Before that, the NDP did a lot of work on this. My dear colleague, Yvon Godin, is well known by those who have been in the House for many years. He fought for years to ensure that the judges appointed were bilingual. He introduced a bill in June 2008. He started again in November 2008, and in 2010, he introduced the very well-constructed Bill C-232. It was more or less the same bill that I introduced. This bill was agreed to by a majority of the members of the House of Commons because the Liberals voted in favour of it. It ended up in the Senate, but unfortunately, the Conservative senators dragged out the process until the House adjourned and elections were called. Unfortunately, the bill died on the Order Paper.

The House did pass the bill, however. The elected members passed the bill. The Liberals are now in power and they are looking for any possible excuse not to pass this bill because it may be unconstitutional.

Why do the Liberals and my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, not refer the bill to the Supreme Court for an opinion? Is this bill constitutional or not? Let us ask the Supreme Court for an opinion.

When we asked the experts whether the bill was unconstitutional, they all said they could not say. We have to ask the Supreme Court for an opinion.

We know that, in the past, the Conservatives unfortunately did not always appoint bilingual judges. Therefore, if we want to ensure that we continue to have bilingual Supreme Court justices, we definitely must pass a bill. That is why this bill must be passed. I hope that the Liberals will take this bill seriously and pass it to ensure that regional representation will finally be mandated, and also to ensure that both official languages are on an equal footing. They must be equal, and one cannot be held above the other. Canadians, regardless of whether they speak French or English in Canada, must be treated equally before the law, especially since the Supreme Court is the highest court in the land.

[Official Languages, September 21st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for his response.

I would like to thank him for his hard work related to filling the official languages commissioner position. Unfortunately, the current official languages commissioner will be leaving the position soon, and we must not be without an official languages commissioner for any period of time. May I reiterate the importance of beginning the search for someone to fill this upcoming vacancy as soon as possible. I know he is working very hard on it, but he will have to work even harder.

I asked him a very simple question. One of the recommendations was for a monitoring mechanism. I looked everywhere yesterday and today, but I found nothing about a monitoring mechanism, which should have been in place as of August 31. Maybe I did not search thoroughly enough.

I would like the parliamentary secretary to tell me where that monitoring mechanism is and make it public. It should be in keeping with the Commissioner of Official Languages' recommendation.

[Official Languages, September 21st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to be following up in the House today on the question I asked during the previous Parliament about a complaint by, among others, my former colleague from Acadie—Bathurst, Yvon Godin, who worked very hard for his constituents and for Acadia and the Francophonie as a whole.

There were some key moments in people's busy lives when they had trouble getting service in French from the RCMP outside Parliament. There were complaints, and not just from Mr. Godin. Private citizens also spoke up, and the Commissioner produced a report.

According to the report, the complaint was admissible, and the RCMP had failed to fulfill its obligations under the Official Languages Act. Corrective action was called for because the RCMP did not fully comply with part IV of the Official Languages Act, communications with and services to the public.

Consequently, the commissioner called for improvements, insisting on two key recommendations. The first recommendation was that the RCMP draft and implement a procedure that requires biannual reminders of official language obligations to be made to all officers assigned to Parliament Hill security so that they understand the obligations set out in part IV of the act. It was simply a reminder for all officers that they have obligations and that they must respect these obligations. It is very simple, but very important. Reminders are always a good thing.

The second recommendation was extremely important. The RCMP was to establish a monitoring mechanism available at all times on Parliament Hill by August 31, 2016. The deadline has passed. This is the first week the House of Commons has sat after the recess. I am pleased to be back and to ask my colleague, who is here today, the question about official languages. Can he confirm that a monitoring mechanism that is available at all times on Parliament Hill was established by August 31, 2016?

I am pleased to see that the parliamentary secretary responsible for official languages is here with us this evening. As such, maybe he can tell us about this oversight mechanism, what it refers to, and how we can access it. Members of the public who lodged this complaint want to be sure that they can receive services in both official languages from the RCMP and our security officers when they come to the House of Commons or take a stroll on the Hill. It is also extremely important for the members, for the people who work on the Hill, and for all those who provide this service to the public.

I hope that we will get an answer soon. I wrote a letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons to get an update on this matter. I was told there would be news soon.

As such, I would like the parliamentary secretary to tell me whether any information on this oversight mechanism has been made public and whether he can confirm that the service is now available at all times on Parliament Hill in both official languages.

[Food and Drugs Act, September 20th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques for coming to my riding to present his private member's bill on the transfer of family farms and small businesses.

Everyone supported his bill. It was unanimous. I hope that the Liberals will pass it because it is an excellent bill that will help our businesses and our family farms across Canada.

When we think about concluding trade agreements, we have to ask ourselves whether it is a win-win situation. As my colleague said, it is extremely important that we give it some thought to ensure that these agreements are fair. Yes, we have to be able to benefit from them. Yes, our SMEs will be able to keep diversifying, be competitive, and export, but we must also ask ourselves whether we considered human rights, and the rights, health, and safety of the workers in these countries. It is very important. Unfortunately, among the countries that are party to the TPP there are some that do not respect workers' rights. There are some that do not respect human rights and are downright dangerous in that regard. We have to be careful.

We have a responsibility to ensure that any agreement we sign is satisfactory not only on an economic level, but also in terms of social, environmental, and health concerns.