Justice committee  Rob—am I allowed to call you Rob in the committee?

Justice committee  Yes, not so much in the actual content of the applications, because the people really worked hard last year to do it, but as you may recall the due date was over Labour Day, the end of the summer, and people were at summer cottages, etc. This year we didn't have anybody complaining about filling in the questionnaire and having to scramble to do it, so your advice to give the candidates more time was a good one.

Justice committee  Our terms of reference were to provide a short list of anywhere from three to five candidates. We understand, based on last year's process, that it is an enormous amount of work that begins once we pass our list to the Prime Minister. We wanted to make sure that each name that we passed to the Prime Minister was somebody who we felt could go to the court, and just as it happened with this combination of candidates there were three who we felt really were head and shoulders above the others.

Justice committee  I would say we didn't have her come before the committee, we went to her. She received us in that lovely sitting room around the table over in the Supreme Court. Last year, we actually had identified a number of questions that we wanted to ask her, for example, about the role of language, about the workload, a whole lot of things that we thought were important for us to understand.

Justice committee  Thank you very much, Minister. Good afternoon. It's lovely to be back with you again. Last year we started at square one to describe the process. I want to say how much I appreciate your comments and particularly your support and endorsement of this process. I know all of the members of the committee were very warmed to know that you were supportive of their work.

Justice committee  Actually, we didn't rank them. In the first go-round we just said, “yes”, “no”, “maybe”. That was the first thing. In other words, we said yes, to go to the next stage, and no, if we thought, for whatever reason, this candidate.... It was usually, perhaps, because the person had not had a lot of experience compared to the others, didn't have that kind of ability, and then maybe it was, “Oh, this is a tough one”, and that's where we had the very interesting conversations.

Justice committee  I'd have to go back and look at it. I know that, from the point of view of the applicants, shorter would be better. It was quite daunting. I'd have to go back and look at it again and say, “We didn't need this, or we didn't need that, or that may have been a duplication.” On the other hand, in terms of transparency, the fact that you can all read the application of the successful candidate means that you have this clear sense, as we did when we first met him in the process, of what kind of person he is.

Justice committee  We looked for all of the above. You know, it's interesting. Judges who serve in very small communities often find that when they go to the bench, they are advised not to be too involved in the community organizations, as many of them were before they were elevated to the bench, because it creates the possibility of conflict of interest in small communities.

Justice committee  I'm not sure I said they were all functionally bilingual; I said they all had some French, and very few had no French at all, and that was right across the country. There was a French test given to ensure functional bilingualism, and not all candidates passed it. Most of them did who took it.

Justice committee  There are two things. One, with the references who we spoke to we really pursued those kinds of issues, but also in the interviews that we did, they were long enough and I think the kinds of questions we asked tried to get at that. We looked at things like their views on collegiality, which is very important for the court.

Justice committee  We're trying to discuss how specific we can be to protect the identity of candidates...their confidentiality.

Justice committee  It's slightly fewer than half. I'm not sure what the proportion of women in the profession now is eligible to go to the courts. When I was justice minister, it was 12.5%, and 25% of my appointments were women. I don't know if women are up to 50% in the eligible group of lawyers with 10-year calls.

Justice committee  Well, the minister will speak to her own role in appointing women to the farm team of other benches, but you know perfectly well that trying to get women to run for Parliament.... This is a very large country, and in the Supreme Court of Canada, people do have to uproot themselves to come to Ottawa.

Justice committee  It's a pleasure.

Justice committee  Do you mean in increasing the number of people who would have applied from some of those groups?