44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 21, 2022 10:00AM
- Oct/21/22 12:09:37 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege concerning misleading comments made in the House by the Minister for Emergency Preparedness.
In late June, it came to light, in evidence presented at the Mass Casualty Commission, that the Liberal government was heavily involved in the RCMP's communications about the April 2020 Nova Scotia tragedy, which, as things would turn out, was followed, mere days later, by a firearms announcement by the Prime Minister on May 1, 2020.
That involvement came to a head in a hastily arranged teleconference between RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki, other top brass at RCMP headquarters and several Nova Scotia RCMP members, where those Nova Scotia officials were called out onto the carpet.
Contemporaneous notes of that teleconference taken by Chief Superintendent Darren Campbell, well-trained in documenting conversations, as any veteran police officer would be, recorded that Commissioner Lucki spoke about a promise she had made to the minister and had linked its importance to that forthcoming order in council announcement. Understandably, the former minister of public safety was vigorously questioned about those events here in the House.
On June 21, he said, on page 7,094 of the Debates, “no direction on an operational matter was given to the commissioner of the RCMP by me or any member of this government.” The following day, the minister said, at page 7,140 of the Debates, “At no point did our government pressure or interfere with the operational decisions of the RCMP, including their communications strategy.”
On the last day of the spring sitting, June 23, he added, at page 7,242 of the Debates, “neither the Prime Minister's Office nor the Minister of Public Safety's office had any role in interfering or pressuring the RCMP to make any operational decisions with respect to the investigation or with respect to RCMP communications around the investigation.”
The Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security and the Mass Casualty Commission itself heard from several witnesses over the summer months about their recollections of that teleconference. For his part, the minister doubled down on his own position, saying, unequivocally, at the committee on July 25, at page 1 of the evidence, “I did not ask them to release any specific information, nor did I receive a promise for them to do so.”
Later, in the meeting, at page 5 of the evidence, the minister reiterated, “I did not ask her to release that information. It wasn't required.”
In other evidence at the committee and commission, we heard Commissioner Lucki's claim that the minister's chief of staff was curious as to whether the types of firearms involved would be named in a press conference and, in turn, the RCMP commissioner dutifully inquired whether that would be the case. She asserts that she was so informed and passed the information back.
When it did not come to pass, we are supposed to believe that she felt embarrassed for having given the minister wrong information and convened the teleconference with senior Nova Scotia RCMP officials to address the miscommunication.
Subsequently, it was revealed that this conference call had been recorded by Dan Brien, an issues management adviser with the RCMP and a former longtime Liberal staffer, including serving as communications director to the previous public safety minister, Ralph Goodale. Lo and behold, those recordings had gone missing. Nonetheless, they were recovered somehow. Just yesterday, the recordings of this conversation and transcripts of them were published by the Mass Casualty Commission. That has shed a much brighter light on the infamous April 28, 2020, teleconference.
In the transcript, titled “Audio file 3 of 3 - Recorded: 2020-04-28 8:48:57 PM”, the commissioner is quoted, at lines 15 to 17 on page 1, as saying, “the little one line that I needed to be put into Darren’s speaking notes; how did it get to me that that one line was going to be in his speaking notes and it wasn’t?”
The keywords there are “one line that I needed to be put in”. It is pertinent because, as we know, the claim had been made that innocent questions had been asked by or on behalf of the minister.
In fact, the commissioner offered this explanation of the minister's interest in this issue in the following exchange with the Liberal member for Fleetwood—Port Kells, at page 24 of the evidence for the public safety committee of July 25 meeting. This is the question: “A critical piece here is, when the question was asked, was the question asked 'if' it would be disclosed, or did they ask 'for' it to be disclosed?”
Commissioner Brenda Lucki responds, “To my recollection, like I said at the very beginning, it's 'if' the weapons information would be included.”
Clearly, it was not mere curiosity whether the guns would be named. It was a line the commissioner “needed to be put in”, to use her own words. Was it at her own behest, or on behalf of someone higher up?
We must recall that the minister told the House on June 23 that the government had not played “any role” with respect to RCMP communications. Turning back to the transcript, I would refer the Chair to lines 19 and 20 on page two: “yet I got hit again, um, not being able to come through for the Minister, um on - on the simplest of requests”.
Lest we might think it is ambiguous from that question whether the commissioner may have been meaning to simply do a big favour for the minister, this next quote should leave the House with no doubt. I will now cite the transcript entitled “Audio file 1 of 3 - Recorded: 2020-04-28 8:34:52 PM”. At lines 11 and 12 on page one, we read the commissioner saying, “Flew it up the flagpole because it was a request that I got...from the Minister’s office.”
There we have it. The request came from the minister's office, but we might ask what that request was, that one line the commissioner needed to have added. It was to pre-position, as communications folks would say, for the May 1, 2020, Liberal firearms announcement.
Referring to the transcript entitled “Audio file 2 of 3 - Recorded: 2020-04-28 8:42:48 PM”, we read at lines 10 to 15 on page two, “Does anybody realize what’s going on in the world of handguns and guns right now? The fact that they’re in the middle of trying to get a legislation going”. That is the key point. That is the quote from that testimony, and I will read it again very quickly: “Does anybody realize what’s going on in the world of handguns and guns right now? The fact that they’re in the middle of trying to get a legislation going”.
There is the direct link between the government's partisan political agenda and the interference in an active investigation into a tragic shooting that left 22 innocent Canadians dead. The RCMP on the ground had reason not to release that information. The government was putting political pressure on those officers to release that information, which could have jeopardized their ongoing efforts to track the events that led to the tragic shooting.
This June, the minister asserted there was no direction, interference or pressure. If the minister were to come down to the House and say that what I just quoted to the House does not add up to that, the next quotations I will offer should remove any ambiguity about the nature or tone of that so-called request from the minister's office.
Members will recall that at the July 25 public safety committee meeting, the commissioner tried to brush off the urgency of these details coming out. Answering the Liberal member for Fleetwood—Port Kells when he asked why it was important this information be released at page 25 of the evidence, she said, “It wasn't important whether or not it was released.” The commissioner may have been on message with the minister's own committee statement, but the teleconference recording would prove them both wrong.
At lines 31 to 33 of page two of the transcript of audio file three, Commissioner Lucki is documented saying, “I already have a request sitting in my phone that the Minister wants to speak with me, and I know exactly what it’s gonna be about. And I can’t even, you know, I can’t uh, I – I – there’s not much I can say except that, once again, I dropped the ball, so that’s gonna be the fourth time I’m gonna say that to him”. She had already made one apology to the minister about her dropping the ball on pre-positioning for the Liberal gun announcement.
At lines 39 to 41 of page one of the transcript of audio file one, the RCMP commissioner says, “it’s pretty difficult when you have to tell, I have apologized to the Minister; I’m waiting for the Prime Minister to call me so I can apologize”. She is apologizing for not including that information the Liberal government decided would help it in a partisan way, despite the impact it may have on an ongoing police investigation.
It turns out that it was very important that the firearms information be released, despite what both the minister and the commissioner told the committee.
Let me put all these pieces together into one succinct summary. The RCMP commissioner is now on tape saying she “needed” a line to be put in. There are press conference remarks about an RCMP investigation in order to be able to “to come through for the Minister...on the simplest of requests” to accommodate information relevant to soon-to-be announced firearms laws.
Not having succeeded and not being satisfied with one apology, the minister was on the line looking for accountability because the commissioner had dropped the ball. The minister's comments to the House in June simply do not hold water. There is no other way to put it. He has misled this House, and he and the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have both misled the public safety committee.
It is a well-established principle here that to make out a prima facie case of privilege in relation to a claim of misleading the House, three elements must be established.
First, it must be proven that the statement was misleading. The recordings and the transcripts taken in their entirety baldly contradict the minister's own assertions on the floor of the House in June.
Second, it must be established that the member making the statement knew it to be misleading. The RCMP commissioner herself said in these recordings that the minister had asked to speak to her and she said, “I know exactly what it’s gonna be about.” We know exactly what it was about.
Third, the misleading statement must have been offered with the intention to mislead the House. In June, when the revelations about this conference call first broke, the minister was under a political firestorm here in the House. He was in full-on damage control mode. In the circumstances, there is no way to view his comments other than as an attempt to be a wet blanket to smother yet another political scandal of the current Liberal government, interfering in police criminal investigations for political advantage.
It is my respectful submission that the three-part test concerning misleading the House has been satisfied. As Mr. Speaker Milliken ruled on February 1, 2002, at page 8,581 of the Debates:
I believe that both the minister and other hon. members recognize that two versions of events have been presented to the House.
...On the basis of the arguments presented by hon. members and in view of the gravity of the matter, I have concluded that the situation before us where the House is left with two versions of events is one that merits further consideration by an appropriate committee, if only to clear the air.
The air here certainly needs to be cleared. The stench must be purged, even if the minister heeds Conservative calls to resign.
Finally, before concluding, there is one potential hurdle the Liberals might try to identify that I want to address up front. That is that the Mass Casualty Commission's recordings and transcripts have not yet been formally placed before the House. However, I would refer members to the decision of Mr. Speaker Jerome on December 6, 1978, at page 1,856 of the Debates, where a prima facie case of privilege was established in relation to misleading information on the strength of evidence that was given before the Commission of Inquiry Concerning Certain Activities of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, also known as the McDonald commission.
Today's circumstances are, frankly, no different. In both cases, we have evidence from an RCMP commissioner given to a royal commission established under the Inquiries Act that contradicts the information which is before the House. Just as Mr. Speaker Jerome was prepared to find a prima facie case of privilege then, I believe that the Speaker can and must find one in the present circumstances to allow the House to address the misleading claims of the Minister of Emergency Preparedness.
I would just remind the Speaker, and I remind all hon. members, that we are not expecting the Speaker himself to make this determination. We are not expecting the Speaker himself to rule unilaterally that the minister is in contempt of the House or that the minister deliberately misled the House. All we are asking the Speaker to do is to allow the House to come to that decision and to make its own decision on this issue. The role of the Speaker is not to make this determination on his own. The role of the Speaker is to decide whether this rises to the level of allowing the House to study the matter and the House itself to pronounce on whether the minister is in contempt or has deliberately misled the House.
The gravity of this situation should not be forgotten. We are not simply pointing out a time when the minister was caught up with a contradiction about a minor issue or got some details wrong. We are talking about the allegation that in the middle of an ongoing investigation, mere days after a tragic shooting, the government was putting political pressure on the RCMP communications around the issue.
The RCMP officers who were conducting the investigation felt that releasing the specific information around the firearms that were used in the shooting could jeopardize their ability to find out where these firearms came from or other details around the case. It was the officers' discretion and their expertise that led them to the conclusion that they should not divulge that information at that time in the investigation.
For its own partisan political purposes, the government broke all bounds of decency and violated that independence between the executive branch of government and our national police force. It was all for political gain. That is why the situation rises to the level of justifying a finding of, at least at first glance, a breach of privilege.
Should you find that we are correct in this assertion, Mr. Speaker, I would be prepared to move the appropriate motion.
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- Oct/21/22 12:25:04 p.m.
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I thank the House leader of the official opposition for raising this issue. The Chair will examine the matter and come back with a ruling on it.
The hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader wishes to comment on the matter.
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- Oct/21/22 12:25:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we will have the opportunity to peruse what the member has put on the record and get back to the Speaker in a timely fashion.
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- Oct/21/22 12:25:33 p.m.
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The member for New Westminster—Burnaby would also like to speak to this.
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- Oct/21/22 12:25:38 p.m.
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Congratulations on your appointment, Mr. Speaker.
NDP members also feel that this is an important issue. We would like to look at the Hansard. If we cannot do that in the next two hours, we will do it at the next meeting of the House of Commons.
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- Oct/21/22 12:26:02 p.m.
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- Oct/21/22 12:27:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as always, it is an honour to rise in this place and present petitions from concerned Canadians about a whole host of issues.
I am pleased to once again stand and address something that I think has special relevance to be presented at this point in time, because of the recent revelations associated with the Communist Party of China and its conference that has been taking place. Certainly there are very concerning things, and I have heard from constituents about that.
Specifically, the petition that I once again have the honour to table in the House today draws the attention of this place to the genocide taking place against the Uighur people in the People's Republic of China. Without going into too much of the preamble, the petitioners call on the House of Commons to take the following actions to address this very important situation: One, formally recognize that Uighurs in China have been and are being subject to genocide; and two, use the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, known as the Magnitsky act, to sanction those who are responsible for the heinous crimes being committed against the Uighur people.
It is of the utmost importance that Canada stand with peoples who are being persecuted, specifically when it comes to ethnic and religious minorities who are facing persecution, so it is an honour to stand in this place on behalf of many Canadians who wish to draw the attention of the House of Commons to this very important issue.
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- Oct/21/22 12:29:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition from Canadians who have pointed out that the impacts of climate change are accelerating in Canada, that Canadian greenhouse gas reduction targets are inadequate, that the efforts of this government are inadequate and that the subsidizing of fossil fuel production is not compatible with the stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Therefore, the petitioners ask that the government undertake a just transition off of fossil fuel that leaves no one behind, eliminates federal fossil fuel subsidies and halts the expansion of fossil fuel production in Canada.
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- Oct/21/22 12:29:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present on behalf of Canadians.
The first petition is with regard to ensuring that we acknowledge the Indian government's discriminatory anti-minority laws, the rising threat of genocide against Muslims and the prosecution of Christians, Dalits and other minorities in India.
Additionally, the petitioners want to include human rights experts in all trade and bilateral agreements with India to safeguard the freedom, justice and human rights of prosecuted minorities there.
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- Oct/21/22 12:31:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the second petition is on behalf of parents and individuals in Alberta who are concerned about an incident that took place in April 2010, when the superintendent on the board of an Alberta school division moved to permanently ban Métis students from attending nearby Alberta public schools.
These families and their children have faced immense levels of barriers since this time, including an inability to graduate from high school, in addition to collateral damages related to their mental health and well-being.
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- Oct/21/22 12:31:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as you likely are aware, there is a significant ongoing petition campaign, collecting thousands and thousands of signatures. Many members of Parliament have brought it forward. It is with regard to the illegal and unethical harvesting of organs.
The petitioners recognize that the Falun Gong is a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline, which consists of meditation, exercise and moral teachings based on principles of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. The people of that faith and others who signed this petition are asking parliamentarians to do what they can, which would include things such as supporting a private member's bill to deal with the issue.
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- Oct/21/22 12:32:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would ask that all questions be allowed to stand.
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- Oct/21/22 12:32:35 p.m.
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Is that agreed?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
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- Oct/21/22 12:32:52 p.m.
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Resuming debate. There were five minutes left for questions and comments on the speech by the hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot.
The hon. member for Langley—Aldergrove.
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- Oct/21/22 12:33:11 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-9
Mr. Speaker, today we are talking about the Judges Act, Bill C-9. A very important principle in western democracy is judicial independence, the independence of the criminal justice system. In Canada today we are hearing shocking news that the government is willing to interfere in an independent police investigation.
I wonder if my colleague could comment on the importance of judicial independence.
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- Oct/21/22 12:33:44 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-9
Mr. Speaker, I, like many in this House and I hope many from all parties in this House, am disappointed and disgusted that the evidence that has been found in the Mass Casualty Commission has demonstrated somebody was lying. As we talk about Bill C-9, which has to do with restoring some confidence in our judicial process, it is absolutely fundamental that this place acknowledge that it is not acceptable for there to be that judicial interference.
What is worse is that this is not the first time the Prime Minister and the Liberal government have been caught doing so. We can think back to a number of examples that include Jody Wilson-Raybould, the former attorney general and minister of justice, not bending her will to that of the Prime Minister. There are a number of other examples, and most recently, using the largest mass shooting in Canadian history for the Liberals to further their narrow political interests.
Judicial independence is fundamentally important, but so is accountability when it comes to leaders who would put those principles at risk in our democratic system.
I share the concern of my colleague from Langley—Aldergrove that we are seeing something incredibly disturbing. I do not even think disturbing is a strong enough word when it comes to the erosion of trust taking place in our institutions.
We need to all work together in this place, including the Minister of Public Safety, the current and the former. There has to be work done to ensure that trust is restored, because I hear often from constituents who say they simply cannot trust our institutions. They are losing faith, and not just in the Prime Minister. To be honest, I do not think any of my constituents, or certainly not very many, have ever had much trust or faith in the Liberal Party or the Liberal government.
What is most incredibly disappointing is that we are seeing, and I am hearing this from many Canadians, a loss of trust in the very institutions of our nations. We can look at many examples of the Liberal government directly contributing to that, and that has to change.
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- Oct/21/22 12:36:22 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-9
Mr. Speaker, I do not know how relevant that would have been, but given the member wants to talk about the importance of judicial independence, let us take a look at what the Judicial Council has said. I posed this to the member before.
The Judicial Council is wanting to see this legislation pass. There was a high sense of disappointment. As opposed to trying to go back to 18 months or two years ago and saying “this and this” and “but this” and “but that”, why will the Conservative Party today not acknowledge that the reason it is not going to committee is that the Conservative Party has made the decision to continue the ongoing debate.
When the member talks about the independence of the judicial system, maybe he could lend some credibility to that statement by acknowledging that the Conservatives should let the bill go to committee. It would not limit debate. There is still going to be a lot more debate to come.
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- Oct/21/22 12:37:23 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-9
Mr. Speaker, I find it ironic that he said he does not want me to talk about 18 months ago, when the reality is this bill would have been passed probably about 12 months ago had it not been for the Prime Minister's going against his word and against his public commitment by calling an election.
We have seen numerous examples of something being fast-tracked in this place and the government denying the opportunity to members to meaningfully engage on a subject. This is regarding bills not just related to the Judges Act but on a whole host of other issues. If we do not have the thoughtful, fulsome debate in this place, if things do not get sent to and from committee and the Senate for their good work, if that is not done here there are mistakes that get made, and that ends up delaying the process even further.
I am sorry it offends the Liberals that we are simply doing our jobs.
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- Oct/21/22 12:38:30 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-9
Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to speak today on Bill C‑9, right after my friend, the member for Battle River—Crowfoot.
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- Oct/21/22 12:38:30 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-9
I want to begin by entering this debate midstream and responding to some of the comments that I was hearing in the questions and comments period immediately prior to my speech, before shifting into some of the other comments I want to make specifically about this legislation.
A favourite subject of the member for Winnipeg North is legislative timing and the processes of the House, and I must confess that it is a subject I enjoy engaging in dialogue about as well. However, I think he is always selective in his presentation of the story when it comes to the timing or process of legislation. There are a number of different aspects to that. In particular, he is essentially telling my colleague that we should not be debating this bill because he wants the bill to move forward on a certain timeline.
It is important for everybody listening to know that it is the sole prerogative of the government to schedule the legislation it is moving forward for debate in the time slots we have for presenting it, which is the vast majority of the parliamentary calender. The government needs to set aside some time for opposition days, where opposition parties put forward motions, and there is the possibility for members to move concurrence of committee reports. However, those are quite constrained given the time that those debates take. Of course, there is also Private Members' Business.
There are therefore some opportunities outside of government for legislation, policy or motions to be put forward for debate in the House, but the vast majority of the time is available to the government to schedule at their sole discretion. It is the government that makes decisions about which bills are priorities and which bills to put forward. If it wants a bill to advance, then I think it has an obligation to schedule it for enough days of debate so that debate can be brought to a conclusion. That principle applies for Bill C-9, as it does for any other bill.
What we often see the government do is fail to prioritize a bill within its own allocation of time. Then it acts mystified about the fact that it is not moving based on some artificial timeline that it has set. We saw this with Bill C-22, where the government scheduled it for one day of debate, did not schedule it for weeks afterwards and then asked why the bill was not moving forward. Of course, debate concluded the next time it was scheduled, but it would have moved forward faster if the government had chosen to prioritize it.
I detect the same string of argumentation again here from my friend from Winnipeg North. He is keen to see Bill C-9 move forward, apparently, but not keen enough to have successfully lobbied his House leader to schedule this bill and put it forward on a larger number of days. Friday is a very short day relative to the time we get.
I wanted to spend a few minutes on that particular point because I know it comes up again and again, and to pre-empt, in a sense, what I suspect will be a question from my friend from Winnipeg North, although I will say that I did appreciate him tabling a petition relating to Bill S-223 on organ harvesting. I hope that is a bill the foreign affairs committee will prioritize for deliberation and move forward, because as members know, it has been a long time.
Having responded to that, I want to add my voice to the comments by my friend from Battle River—Crowfoot pertaining to the larger issues of trust in our institutions and independence. We are talking today, in the context of Bill C-9, about certain circumstances, events and comments that have impacted trust and faith in the judiciary, and I think we need to affirm the importance of institutions.
We want to see that our institutions are trusted, but we also want our institutions to be worthy of that trust. Sometimes what we hear from some members is a call to trust institutions without being willing to note when there have been significant problems in the conduct of individuals in those institutions. I think the issue raised by the opposition House leader today with respect to interference by the government in a criminal case is another important issue in the ongoing conversation about trust in our institutions and the actions of government. Acts of interference by the government certainly do have an impact on how our institutions are perceived and the degree to which they are trusted. These matters of interference and the independence of institutions are important in their own right, but they are also important in terms of how they contribute to the level of trust that Canadians can reasonably have, in light of the facts, in the institutions that are so critical for holding our public life together.
Bill C-9, the piece of legislation we are debating today, is, on the face of it, a relatively technical piece of legislation, although as members know, every technical piece of legislation has interesting philosophical issues and questions underneath it. The legislation is about making changes to the mechanisms or processes that are in place around judicial discipline, or the discipline of judges. I will just read the summary. It states:
This enactment amends the Judges Act to replace the process through which the conduct of federally appointed judges is reviewed by the Canadian Judicial Council. It establishes a new process for reviewing allegations of misconduct that are not serious enough to warrant a judge's removal from office and makes changes to the process by which recommendations regarding removal from office can be made to the Minister of Justice. As with the provisions it replaces, this new process also applies to persons, other than judges, who are appointed under an Act of Parliament to hold office during good behaviour.
It creates mechanisms by which individuals who have been appointed to hold office, pending “good behaviour”, could be considered not to have fulfilled the standards required around good behaviour and could therefore be removed from office and/or face other mechanisms of discipline. I think the details and mechanics of these mechanisms are extremely important, and are things that will be important not only for the House to consider but for committee to go into further.
After reading through the legislation, one thing I found quite interesting was the presence of a review panel of lay people who, by design, cannot have any legal background. It is always interesting to me when there is this balance where, on the one hand, there are aspects of our judicial system where we demand a certain level of expertise, and then on the other hand, there are certain places where, I think for good, understandable reasons, we demand a lack of expertise formally and in practice as a means of saying that we want some people involved in the decision-making who are non-experts.
I recall a quotation from former British prime minister Clement Attlee, who talked about how he wanted his ministers not to be experts on the subjects they were ministers of. I know that is a bit of a parenthetical question, but it is one that has been debated over the years regarding various kinds of appointments.
In any event, this legislation includes a specific, designated role in the termination process for lay people. I want to note as well the justifications by which a judge could be removed from office. Proposed section 80 says, “For the purposes of this Division, the removal from office of a judge is justified only” for these reasons:
(a) infirmity;
(b) misconduct;
(c) failure in the due execution of judicial office;
(d) the judge is in a position that a reasonable, fair-minded and informed observer would consider to be incompatible with the due execution of judicial office.
These are, in some ways, notionally objective criteria, but naturally there is going to be some level of subjectivity in how they will be applied.
There is a history to the consideration of this issue, and there is a history to the discussion of judicial misconduct that touches on some very important and sensitive issues. In my time as a member of Parliament, there has been a fair bit of discussion specifically around the issue of comments by judges dealing with cases of sexual assault. There was a judge who made some very offensive and outrageous comments in the context of a sexual assault trial that he was presiding over. That provoked a lot of conversation about the reality that someone is not rendered all-knowing and all-virtuous simply by the fact that they have received a judicial appointment, and that maybe there is a legitimate place for saying that someone, by their comments or lack of understanding certain things, is no longer fit to be a judge.
How do we preserve the principle of judicial independence, the principle that judges should be making decisions based on the facts of a case and the law rather than making decisions as democratic legislators do, based on other factors, including public opinion? How do we preserve that principle of judicial independence and also say that there are certain societal norms and values that we would like to see reflected in the conduct and statements of judges? There is a point at which a person can go beyond the pale and simply no longer be suited to that position as a function of some of their comments.
There have been a number of ways of getting at this issue. One was from former Conservative leader Rona Ambrose, who put forward a private member's bill, in 2016 or the first half of the 42nd Parliament, that sought to promote judicial education around sexual assault. That is one way of dealing with comments like this: We can say that maybe it is simply about a lack of knowledge and education.
That bill did not pass in Parliament, but a similar bill was put forward and was passed in the 43rd Parliament. As I said at the time, I think we need to recognize the importance of education around these issues, but also recognize that education is not always the full solution. I think there is a lot of data to suggest that when we mandate certain kinds of training courses, for some people it is a meaningful opportunity for them to learn about the matter at hand, but for other people it is just a matter of checking the boxes that are required. Whether it is a meaningful engagement exercise or a box-checking exercise depends somewhat on the way the material is presented, but a lot of it will depend simply on the disposition of the individual and how willing the individual is to substantively engage with the matter at play.
My conclusion is that the proposal from Rona Ambrose about judicial education was very important and worthwhile, but it does not solve the whole problem of either judicial misconduct or potential issues where a judge is making comments in the context of a trial that are very offensive to the victim and to society at large.
That is some of the history of the issue, but there are also other potential issues. This is not just about comments judges make in trials; it could also be about concerns over personal corruption and other things that could be at play in the context of judicial discipline. This is a piece of legislation that, coming out of that long-running public discussion, seeks to make refinements to the processes around judicial discipline.
One thing I would like to note about this discussion is that it presumes the personal fallibility of judges. Maybe it should be fairly obvious, but with the way some of our Canadian debates have proceeded, maybe it is not so obvious that judges are human beings. They have the potential to develop great expertise, great virtue and commitment to their work.
Judges also, like any other human beings, have the potential for grave errors in reasoning, as well as moral errors of various kinds, including misconduct or corruption. They are human beings, are fallible and can make mistakes in various kinds of situations or ways. The heavy criticism of former justice Robin Camp, some of the subsequent discourse and arguments for judicial education the government has supported, and the very existence of this legislation, affirm the reality of judicial fallibility. However, at other times when we are having debates about criminal justice issues and how we respond to particular kinds of charter litigation, the discourse in the House seems to presume something else, which is the infallibility of judges.
It was very striking to me, when I was first elected as a member of Parliament, that we were, on the one hand, dealing with this whole question of former justice Robin Camp and the issues around judicial fallibility, but on the other hand we had members making comments about at the time Bill C-14, which followed the Carter decision of the Supreme Court, where it was repeated that this was a unanimous court decision. Therefore, our goal as a legislature should simply be to interpret the wisdom we were given from this wise council's vision.
I have a great deal of respect for the role the Supreme Court plays in our democracy, but I also think it is legitimate to disagree with decisions that the courts have made. Part of the process of democratic deliberation is recognizing that, if judges can be personally fallible regarding their own conduct, fallible in the sense of making inappropriate comments in a sexual assault case, then they can also be fallible in there determinations about the appropriate sentence and balance of rights that emerge from a series of arguments about how to interpret given facts in light of the charter.
The fact there is diversity in courts of dissent underlines the potential fallibility of judges, and I think we should, in our Canadian democratic discourse, seek to affirm the importance of judicial independence, and the respect that is owed to that institution, while also recognizing that judges make all kinds of mistakes and that Parliament has a role to deliberate about substantive questions of justice and human dignity and to engage in a constructive and healthy back and forth when it comes to decisions, legislation and how we respond to that.
I could cite other cases that brings this issue to the fore, but I see that I am up against my time to some extent. Therefore, I am grateful for the opportunity to address the issues around Bill C-9, to share a bit of the history, and to underline that, for me, one of the lessons coming out of this is to let us acknowledge that judges are human beings. They have an important job to do, but it is legitimate to disagree with and debate the determinations that are made, and to use constitutional tools that affirm the rights and the role of the legislature when it comes to establishing and advancing common values that are determined through democratic deliberation.
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