Official Languages committee  Here are the two arguments I hear most often. First, people say that bilingualism is not a skill and that we should, therefore, support judges who have the best knowledge of the law or who have a particular expertise, rather than judges who are bilingual. To that I say that bil

Official Languages committee  The second argument is the lack of candidates. It is assumed that there are no bilingual lawyers in Alberta or in Manitoba, and that is a false assumption. Mr. Power and Professor Grammond co-authored a text on the issue. There are bilingual candidates in every Canadian jurisdic

Official Languages committee  There is one thing that can be done: we could have legislation on language evaluations. We may not be able to amend the Supreme Court Act, as Mr. Choquette's bill proposes, for example, to require the appointment of bilingual judges. But we could require an evaluation for each ca

Official Languages committee  There are many ways to accomplish this. An amendment to the Official Languages Act could be proposed.

Official Languages committee  Yes.

Official Languages committee  We welcome the measure because it assures us that, in a foreseeable future, the next judges will be appointed under standards of bilingualism. We feel that the government is acting in good faith, that it will move forward, and that it will adopt the practice in the foreseeable fu

Official Languages committee  We recommend a reference. The first step is to make sure that the process is being done properly, to avoid a disaster like the Justice Nadon affair. One specific example was used to contest and overturn an appointment. We want to avoid a similar problem and all the implications o

Official Languages committee  Yes.

Official Languages committee  I read Professor Grammond's arguments in March with interest. At first sight, I share his opinion. There is a very good chance that the federal Parliament can act alone. That said, everything revolves around what is considered an essential characteristic of the Supreme Court. Unf

Official Languages committee  I quite agree with everything that Mr. Boivin said, but I would like to add that it is difficult to get a handle on the problem quantitatively. First, we need more judges. As a result, we cannot count all the people who became discouraged by our lack of judges and who never asked

Official Languages committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ladies and gentlemen, I will add two points to complete our presentation. First, in terms of bilingualism in the Supreme Court of Canada, we clearly cannot oppose virtue. All judges appointed to the Supreme Court in the future should be able to fulfill the

Official Languages committee  The Mahe decision is the first major decision rendered by the Supreme Court of Canada with respect to education and official language minority communities. It's a case from Alberta that was heard in 1990, and one of the parties was an Edmonton-area school. The case involved secti

Official Languages committee  There are two. Section 23 is the first. The second is section 20(1), which deals with government services and communications. Section 23 refers to application where numbers warrant, and section 20 refers to the existence of significant demand for the service. The questions woul

Official Languages committee  That is not really what I mean. At the least, we should add two short questions to the form that are not in it yet. I am talking about two questions, but statisticians will tell us that there will have to be two, three or four. We need questions to allow us to determine the langu

Official Languages committee  Yes, that could be looked at.