Justice committee  I'm not sure whether that would have increased the number of candidates, and there were representatives of under-represented groups on the committee as well. This was not a uniform, homogeneous group of people. But I think, yes, down the line the opportunity to... judges from the

Justice committee  Again, the terms of reference were clear. At no time was that a difficult thing to fulfill. Atlantic Canada sent us outstanding candidates. It wasn't something where we sat around saying, “Oh my gosh, we'd better rustle up a couple of Atlantic Canadians to put on our list.” Au co

Justice committee  The groups that we asked to solicit their members and to make sure they got the information were groups from across Canada, the Canadian Bar, and all the law societies. I think there's a list of about 19. There are many groups, many ethnic groups of lawyers or lawyers with partic

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  We spoke to chief justices; we spoke to at least two former justices of the Supreme Court of Canada, and most of those consultations came as a result of their being references for other candidates, but we also knew there would be a process of consultation by the Minister of Justi

Justice committee  Perhaps I could say a bit about the process of how we did it. Our terms of reference made a particular point of recognizing the diversity of Canadians, and that identified a number of characteristics where individuals are often under-represented or not represented in the judicia

Justice committee  Well, I think the process of the board itself went remarkably well. If there were many more applications, I think you would need more time; there's no question about that. We worked as expeditiously as possible. I think we felt we had sufficient time, but I was glad that I won th

Justice committee  Well, you know, it's always dangerous to say no because invariably somebody will say, “Well, what about this?” No, I think we actually came up with a pretty good way of implementing our mandate. Again, if we'd had more time, we might have been able to reach out even more. We did

Justice committee  I think probably Christmas is not a great time. You make a good point, that it's good for some and not good for others. More lead time would be great. In the future, I'm sure that will be possible, and having done the process once, people know what to expect. We know, for exa

Justice committee  Yes, they were from across the country.

Justice committee  From the perspective of the committee, the applications were received in confidence. However, it might be something that the minister would like to do, certainly if people agree to have their names put forward. There were a lot of wonderful people, and we thought, “Oh boy, talk a

Justice committee  Thank you very much, Madam Minister. I will perhaps say a few words in French. It is a great pleasure for me to be here with you and to take part in your activities as a “veteran”.

Justice committee  I am happy to see you all and I appreciate the atmosphere here. I respect the work you do for Canadians. I would like to say on behalf of all of the members of the independent advisory board how honoured and delighted we were to be given this task. I can tell you that it was

Justice committee  It was a number that was very reassuring because of the 31 applicants from all across Canada, almost all had some French and met the standards of French. Only a very small number did not have French at all, and most had considerable French. That was very interesting for me to see