Justice committee  Geographical barriers have been very significant, because of the requirement to live in the national capital region. I can't speak for the financial one. There was once a case in Vancouver where a very distinguished lawyer got named to the court, and his wife asked if he had any

Justice committee  The rule of law is the most important thing in a democracy, so thank you all for being a part of that process.

Justice committee  Absolutely. There is another Ontario seat that will be up in 2022, when Justice Moldaver retires. These are difficult choices. There is no question that this was a consideration. At the end of the day, the Prime Minister made a choice to have a new, hitherto unrepresented or not

Justice committee  I think it's all of the above. All of those things are important. I sometimes say that when I became prime minister, nobody who looked or sounded like me had ever done that job before. It was the same thing when I became minister of justice. What you want to do is to create a se

Justice committee  I don't think it should be part of our process. We don't interest ourselves in it. We interest ourselves in competence and philosophy, and particularly as this is reflected in the way candidates have engaged outside of the legal profession. We're interested in what they've done i

Justice committee  Well, what happens with the short list is a prime ministerial mystery, and it is the Prime Minister's prerogative. However, I can tell you that every person who is on that short list is a person of distinction, high character and great quality, who could make an excellent contrib

Justice committee  In answer to your second question, I don't really have any, except to simply constantly work to try to cast the net as broadly as possible to ensure that no one who could make a contribution is missed. Some of that is also, perhaps, a function of things like universal design to m

Justice committee  Well, I would say very briefly that as a member of the group that often didn't have shoulders that were seen as very tappable and was under-represented.... When I was minister of justice, 25% of my judicial appointments were women, but the percentage of people at the bar who were

Justice committee  I would just say that the committee was very keen, if possible, to find an indigenous candidate. There's still the challenge of language; there is bilingual functional ability among indigenous people, sometimes with lawyers who are still junior. I said the last time that I belie

Justice committee  I can say absolutely not. We have access to the judgments that they think are among the most important, or if they are not members of the judiciary, articles or things so we can see their philosophy, and some of the questions on the questionnaire give them a chance to talk a bit

Justice committee  I think [Technical difficulty—Editor] out in some extreme area of judicial thinking you might not want to appoint them, but I think the biggest concern I had when I was minister of justice.... As I said, I was the minister in Mr. Mulroney's government, but I don't know what Rosal

Justice committee  I think it's important. How they vote is irrelevant.

Justice committee  Well, I would suggest that the final decision is the Prime Minister's. The Prime Minister's terms of reference have been that he puts a very high premium on expanding the diversity of the lived experience and perspectives of the judges on the highest court of the land. As a commi

Justice committee  I'll add a few words. In discussions with the Chief Justice, he stressed the importance of bilingualism in the Supreme Court of Canada. One of the things that's important also, and that maybe many Canadians do not realize, is that the workload of the Supreme Court of Canada is

Justice committee  In the group there were 18 candidates. Seven self-identified as visible minorities. Three identified as ethnic, cultural or other minorities. Five identified as indigenous. Zero identified as having disabilities. One identified as LGBTQ. I should just say, on the importance of