Justice committee  Yes, that's one explanation given to it. Yes, definitely.

Justice committee  Yes, it's pretty close to the heart of it. As I said, we don't want somebody to read the provision literally and, as you say, not have an understanding of what discriminatory conduct may be, and then say that this was not discrimination and go ahead and dismiss the complaint.

Justice committee  We just heard from the witness here that his complaints were dismissed in the beginning. Yesterday I was reading, and I saw that a lot of complaints are getting dismissed. That was my understanding, that a lot of complaints are getting dismissed at the screening stage.

Justice committee  If judges use their office to influence anyone, like the arresting police officer, that's a form of lobbying.

Justice committee  Thank you for the question. It's a good question, and one that I haven't looked into. If you want, I can send some comments on that to your office. In the meantime, my colleague may have an answer for you.

Justice committee  Thank you for your question. No, it's just that we want to make sure that there's uniformity. The way this provision reads, it's not limited, but it deals with two specific things—sexual harassment and discrimination. We feel that if a screening officer receives a complaint that

Justice committee  It's a work in progress. That's why we're here. We like its goal. I think you had other witnesses who provided testimony on transparency and the disclosure of documents. We do support that as well, but our focus today and for this bill is these two amendments that we propose.

Justice committee  Okay. I'm talking about cases in which judges use their position to lobby. Let's look at the example of Justice David E. Spiro, who was formerly affiliated with the University of Toronto and the former chair of a lobby group. This judge, at someone's request, called the Univers

Justice committee  Okay. I'll go over it quickly then—

Justice committee  Exactly. The applicant who had been hired for the position had all the qualifications required to fill it. After the judge called the University of Toronto, everything fell apart for her. What the judge had done was exercise a form of lobbying. When the complaint was made, the

Justice committee  It's because if a complaint comes in and it's not direct discrimination, the screening officer may interpret this provision literally. Therefore, if it's not a direct conduct of sexual harassment or discrimination, the complaint may get dismissed even though it could be a legitim

Justice committee  No, not at all. We believe that if a screening officer looks at this.... For example, if the complaint comes in—if I take the matter of Justice Spiro—you know, sharing emails, interfering with the hiring process at a university, that may not in itself seem to be discriminatory, b

Justice committee  Exactly. It's the conduct, so we feel that if we leave the provision the way it is now, a screening officer will look at this and say, “Oh, well, he was not discriminating against a certain individual, so we're going to dismiss the complaint.”

Justice committee  We're suggesting “lobbying, directly or indirectly”.

Justice committee  However minimalistic lobbying can be, it falls under that category, and it goes to a hearing process. This is because now we're in a situation where the panel review qualifies what lobbying is. They look at what the judge does, and they do the exercise of qualifying it. For exa