Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good day, ladies and gentlemen. I am deeply humbled to appear before such a distinguished group of individuals who have served Canadian society in so many important different ways. I had an opportunity to review your biographies. It is both an honour and

Justice committee  I'm certainly happy to reply. I was a hearing member of the panel. I'm certainly very conversant about the section 13 debate. I'm very well briefed with respect to the Taylor decision. I'm familiar with it. I'm familiar with the tribunal's decision on Lemire. That is on judicia

Justice committee  That's what it says, and it is a unanimous decision of the panel. That's what the decision is.

Justice committee  Again, had you asked me when I was in private practice I would have been happy to answer with my opinion with respect to the particular wording of particular sections. Unfortunately, at this point it's not for me, it's for you, Parliament, to decide how you want these sections to

Justice committee  I'm still trying to get a handle on that myself, because I started on November 2. I would anticipate that I might be spending at least 40% of my time hearing cases, but at this time I'm spending a lot of time doing case management and of course learning all the budgeting, the man

Justice committee  Sure. I've run my own small practice successfully for 22 years, so I've had budgeting and management issues there. And when I was a part-time member of the Alberta Human Rights Commission, although I wasn't the chief commissioner, we certainly dealt with budgeting at commission m

Justice committee  No, I would have to say I didn't do that. At that time, it would have gone through the chief commissioner. As well, when I was a bencher of the law society—and of course the Law Society of Alberta runs on funds from the lawyers—we had to deal with budgeting, finance, and other is

Justice committee  I hope I get the opportunity. I didn't have many opportunities to speak French in England. That was a bit of a problem. I often find the accent difficult to understand, whether it's a Quebec or an Alberta accent.

Justice committee  I try to communicate in French. My goal is to become perfectly bilingual so that I can hear cases in French.

Justice committee  That's correct.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Okay, sure. A lot of my part-time work, whether it be as a member of the tribunal or the commission or as an instructor at the University of Alberta, has always been part-time while I've been carrying on my full-time practice. Yes, I wasn't reappointed. There was a three-year te

Justice committee  I can again only say that the decision speaks for itself, so it would be improper for me to really voice my opinion on it. It does say exactly what it says. I can advise you that I'm aware of the issues with respect to the punitive versus compensatory issues of the legislation. A

Justice committee  Yes, I do.

Justice committee  Well, I was certainly counsel for the Alberta Civil Liberties Association. The factum that we filed with the Supreme Court of Canada was to indicate that the case of Vriend was against the government of the province of Alberta at that time, to say that the Alberta Human Rights Ac