Justice committee  No, there's no reason at all. I thought the debate was over the particular choice of a person by reason of his background rather than the experience or his personal qualifications for participating in the evaluation process.

Justice committee  Agreed.

Justice committee  No, I think they need a separate institute. It should be an ongoing study because of the importance of judges in the administration of justice in our total system of government. As you know, the Law Reform Commission has been abolished, which is a theoretical issue. Even if it

Justice committee  No, but I made it clear, I think, that it would impair. In my view, the public is very skeptical, and this can only increase their perception of a lack of impartiality and the politicization of the judicial appointment process.

Justice committee  No, they shouldn't be disqualified, but neither should they be preferred. We come back to this question. One of your colleagues asked me earlier whether I am opposed to politicians being appointed judges. The answer is absolutely not. What I am opposed to is giving preferred tr

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Yes. If you want my subjective argument, I again emphasize that it's not my overriding concern.

Justice committee  Thank you very much. I think this ties directly into the burden of my written submission, namely, that Parliament should be deciding these questions, not the government of the day. As I strongly emphasized, judges are appointed—until they reach the age of retirement—not to serve

Justice committee  We obviously part, as you rightly say, on some very basic issues of policy. I see it as an urgent task. I don't see it as an issue of whether I disagree with the appointment of police officers as part of the advisory committees. My issue is this: Who's going to decide? Is it goin

Justice committee  Thank you. My response would be that the fact that past governments have made changes reflects again what is wrong with the current system. These were unilateral changes: Parliament was not consulted; the public was not consulted. The minister presumably consulted some members o

Justice committee  It depends, of course, on the size of the committee. On the Ontario advisory committee, I think they have 12 or 14 members, the majority of whom are not judges and not lawyers, so that enables them to bring in a broad cross-section of the population, including, I would hope, at l

Justice committee  Well, I've tried to express my views on this. I obviously disagree strongly. Government ministers are appointed, but remember, they're very partisan. They're hardly approaching it from an objective view. Why should they? No government, no minister, is ever going to surrender powe

Justice committee  I think there's a verbal misunderstanding here, Mr. Chair, about what we mean by screening and what we mean by a true advisory function. By screening, we mean that the committee's current terms of reference are meant to tell the government whether or not candidate A is recommend

Justice committee  Yes, thanks, I'd like that very much. I'd like to address the last point raised by Mr. Ménard, the alleged reason given by the government for abolishing the highly recommended. I find it quite unpersuasive. It may be perfectly true that different committees apply different crit

Justice committee  Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I'll make my address in English because that's easier for me. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the invitation to appear before this committee to share with the committee my views on the changes to the judicial appointments advisory committees introd