Colleagues, thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today.
[English]
I am pleased to be this afternoon with this esteemed committee to answer questions regarding items in supplementary estimates (B) as Minister of Justice and Attorney General.
This is my 50th appearance before a parliamentary committee. Joining me today are deputy minister William F. Pentney, associate deputy minister, Pierre Legault, and, senior assistant deputy minister of policy, Donald K. Piragoff.
This has been a busy session. We have three bills that have passed through Parliament. We have three more that are approaching that stage, six in fact when we consider some that are just beginning the process, six or seven more that are in the queue, and 13 private members' bills.
[Translation]
As Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, I am tasked with helping ensure a fair, relevant and accessible justice system for all Canadians.
[English]
A continuing priority and challenge for all of us involved in the justice system is to ensure that all Canadians have access to justice in a timely and meaningful way. I believe this is certainly a sentiment shared by you and participants in the justice system across the country.
Governments in all jurisdictions have obligations in tackling this through multiple initiatives. At the federal level we have been providing ongoing funding for programs to provinces and territories to promote access to justice. Mr. Chair, colleagues, the Department of Justice funded and supported the work of the national Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters, which brought together major stakeholders throughout our system.
The DOJ continues to promote access to family justice by working closely with its provincial and territorial colleagues. I would share with you that I recently attended the annual FPT meeting this September, and it is certainly a sentiment shared by my provincial and territorial colleagues that we continue to improve on this system. People are very motivated, as is the bench.
To that end we've renewed the funding, the grants and contributions available for supporting families experiencing separation and divorce initiatives, for three years. With this renewed funding provinces and territories can access up to $15.5 million annually for the next three years for family justice services that include mediation and support enforcement services. Non-governmental organizations can also access up to $0.5 million annually to help them inform separating and divorcing families about family law. This is a big issue, particularly given the number of unrepresented persons now in our system.
Funding for federal activities under this initiative was also renewed for two years. These activities support the department's mandate with respect to federal family laws and provide legally mandated support enforcement and divorce registry services to provinces and territories, and to all Canadians.
This initiative funds many services and projects that make it easier for separating and divorcing families to access the family justice system, as well as ensure that parents comply with their obligations under family law. An evaluation this year concluded that the initiative achieved its objectives in promoting access to the family justice system for Canadian families. I am pleased to see that we are having measurable and tangible progress, and we hope to replicate this across the entire system.
[Translation]
In addition to promoting access to the family justice system, our government's efforts also include two major initiatives funded under the Roadmap for Canada's Official Languages 2013-2018 to develop and enhance the vitality of official language minority communities and promote linguistic duality in the justice system.
[English]
The Department of Justice also promotes access to justice through our justice partnership and innovative program, which provides resources for projects that address access to justice, family violence, public legal education and information, and violence against aboriginal women and girls. This department plans to transfer $1.26 million earmarked for contributions from this program towards grants.
Mr. Chairman, I know you follow this type of activity very closely. This transfer is a positive move that will reduce the administrative burden on the public legal information organizations and non-governmental organizations. Ultimately, it will make it easier to access funding using a high-risk based approach and ensure that the justice system remains accessible, efficient, and effective.
On the issue of legal aid, at the federal-provincial-territorial ministers meeting I referenced, my colleagues and I reiterated our commitment for continued collaboration to strengthen legal aid and the justice system for Canadians. In these supplementary estimates, the total annual federal funding has increased by $14.4 million for 2014-15 to 2016-17. This comprises funding for immigration and refugee legal aid, court-ordered counsel in federal prosecutions, and program operations.
[Translation]
Part of ensuring access to justice is ensuring that Canadians are protected and that our streets and communities remain safe.
Our government is moving forward with several criminal justice initiatives in order to keep our citizens safe. It is indeed the foremost responsibility of any government.
[English]
One of these initiatives is the aboriginal justice strategy, which was renewed in budget 2014 at $22.2 million over two years. This program, operated on a cost-shared basis with provinces and territories, supports community-based justice programs that have been proven to be effective in reducing crime and providing alternatives to incarceration for less serious crimes in appropriate circumstances.
We also continue to work through the Department of Justice's youth justice fund to encourage a youth justice system that is fair and effective. This fund offers grants and contributions to various organizations. While demand for grants to support small-scale projects has declined in recent years, the demand for contributions to support multi-year pilot projects continues to increase. I can give you a number of examples, particularly in urban settings: the guns and gangs initiative, drug treatment, mental health treatment, and, particularly important for prairie provinces but I would suggest across the country, programs aimed at addressing the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome disorder. To meet the growing demand of these requests, Mr. Chairman, we are transferring $600,000 from the fund's grants funding to contribution funding, so that it is better able to meet the current needs of our partners.
Another one of these initiatives to keep our citizens safe was in response to the Bedford decision. Members here will recall when the Supreme Court struck the three major sections on prosecution last December. The government took steps to protect our communities, vulnerable people, and those involved in this inherently dangerous activity by focusing police resources on the consumers and the perpetrators.
I'm pleased to say that Bill , the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, will come into force next week. I want to take this opportunity to thank this committee for their attention and the fact that you reconvened the committee over the summer months to focus on this important issue. Through this bill we're ensuring that the laws protect those who sell their sexual services and prosecute those who exploit them. This bill will protect communities as well from the harms of prostitution, and reduce, we hope, the demand for sexual services.
In addition, the justice and public safety departments will be providing support for exit strategy programming for those involved in prostitution. That amount, as you know, is $20 million. There will be more to put forward in the coming days about how to enhance such things as education, job training, helping with child care, counselling, and mental health and addictions. All of these figure prominently in this complex problem.
Mr. Chairman, our government has also continued to move forward on new initiatives that ensure that victims of crime are treated with the courtesy, compassion, and respect they deserve. For example, over the past seven years, we have designated more than $140 million to give victims a more effective voice through initiatives delivered by the Department of Justice. This amounts to money allocated to the Department of Justice's victims fund, a grants and contributions program that provides funding to provinces, territories, and non-governmental organizations whose projects, activities, and operations support the objectives of this fund.
We also work closely with other departments; Public Safety, as I mentioned, but certainly Labour and the minister responsible for the Status of Women.
Mr. Chair, other initiatives include, as you are aware, the victims ombudsman's office, which is key to enhancing victims...and include a strategy of $10 million to support the child advocacy centres set up across the country.
I can table more information with respect to these advocacy centres, but suffice it to say that this is, I think, one of the most compassionate initiatives we have undertaken in decades, which goes directly to the effort to lessen the harms that inevitably flow from child sexual abuse. This work, which is being done in some 22 centres now across Canada, is having a profound impact of improvement upon our justice system, vis-à-vis this devastating problem of child abuse. In my time as Minister of Justice, the child and youth advocacy centres are the most impressive initiative I have seen.
Mr. Chair, other important priorities for the government for protecting Canadians include combatting impaired driving, still the number one cause of criminal death in Canada. To that end, I remain committed to bringing forward legislative initiatives to modernize and strengthen impaired and drug-impaired offences as they pertain to provisions of the Criminal Code.
In conclusion, all of this is to say, Mr. Chair and colleagues, that the money that has been allotted to our department has been well used and is accounted for.
[Translation]
To conclude, I would like to thank you and your committee members for the important work you do, and for giving me the opportunity to make these opening remarks.
The funding that the Department of Justice portfolio has received has brought results for Canadians, and I will do my utmost to ensure that these funds will continue to be spent wisely.
I now look forward to taking your questions.
Thank you.
Mr. Minister, thank you for agreeing to change the date of your appearance before our committee so that we can study the votes allocated to your department under supplementary estimates (B) 2014-15.
Before getting to the heart of the matter, I would be remiss if I didn't share my thoughts with you about today's top news. As a result, more people are probably following our committee today than on many other occasions when we deal with various topics. I am talking about the appointment made to the Supreme Court of Canada to fill the position of Justice Lebel, who is retiring. Let me also take this opportunity to commend him for all his years of service. As a lawyer from Quebec, I am proud of the work accomplished by Justice Louis Lebel over the course of his career.
He will be replaced by Suzanne Côté. This is the first time I have seen a lawyer directly appointed to the Supreme Court. It is not common, but it is interesting. I am very pleased that you have finally agreed to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court of Canada. Congratulations. As you know, I have often talked to you about that. In my view, it is important for the Supreme Court to show equality between men and women, as much as it can with an uneven number of members. This is the kind of equality we must have in Canada. Congratulations on doing that.
Today, we are hearing good things about the Hon. Suzanne Côté, as we will have to call her soon. Whether you like it or not, you know as well as I do that, when we talk about the Supreme Court of Canada, the process is always the elephant in the room.
I would like to digress for a moment. Your government has just made the final appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada. Unless someone resigns, I don't think there will be any positions to fill at the Supreme Court for some time. Mr. Minister, perhaps we should use that time to think about the process. People on the ground have many ideas. Various experts have talked about it and made various suggestions. Over the years, since the early 2000s, we have been trying to use different methods. I think Canadians are entitled to a process that is as transparent as possible.
In addition to the fact that Suzanne Côté's appointment is excellent, I would like to be able to tell everyone who asks me whether it was a political or transparent process. However, I will not be able to do so because everything was done behind closed doors. That is always a bit irritating. I think it is possible to make the same decisions using a more open process.
Mr. Minister, I hope that you will be willing to allow this committee, or any other committee, to study the issue and see whether we could do better. When I say “do better”, I am not talking about a better appointment, but about improving the process. That is what I am hoping for in this situation. I find it regrettable that there is no ad hoc committee because it is always useful to introduce new judges to Canadians. With that, I conclude this part of my remarks.
I would like us to do this for all the other appointments. We are talking about the budget here. Mr. Minister, some items are already in your budgets, such as some judicial positions that are still not filled. I am upset, because we are talking about access to justice, but there are still 23 vacancies at the Ontario Superior Court. All the judges I meet during my consultations tell me that this has a huge impact on access to justice and on the way justice is done. Judges are sometimes swamped. We should take care of that and fill those positions as soon as possible.
We also need to make sure that the process of appointing the judges is not political. It needs to be as transparent as possible because, as you explained in the House this week, we always strive to reward merit, to reward people's skills and qualifications. This should also apply to the courts.
I will let you respond to those few comments.
:
Mr. Casey, let me respond this way. It's somewhat ironic that you, representing the Liberal Party, would be wrapping around the words of Peter MacKay in 2004 when they were soundly rejected by the justice minister, Mr. Cotler at the time, so much so that they had to be put in a dissenting report that clearly indicated that your party—albeit you weren't there—made the very overt decision to not follow that advice.
There have been various processes used over time. As I said to Madam Boivin, upon forming the government in 2006, we initiated the most open, inclusive process that's ever been seen in the Canadian judicial system, which included this parliamentary process of a committee, of recommendations, of working from a list. Suffice it to say that I personally believe that processes can always be improved and should be revisited from time to time.
One must also keep in mind the circumstances and the tenor of the times. We needed to move quickly, for example, with respect to the appointment of Mr. Justice Cromwell, as I recall, because of a pending election and the need to have a full complement. Similarly, and more recently, with the appointment of Mr. Justice Gascon and Madam Côté, I would suggest that because of the importance of having a full complement from the province of Quebec those circumstances dictated that we move and use the alternative process.
On the consultative part of this exercise, is it aided or hindered by the parliamentary participation of having the committee go out and do these consultations and then report back to me or through me to the Prime Minister? That remains to be seen. When there are leaks and when the process itself is impugned, and individuals who might otherwise want their names considered are dissuaded from doing so because of the threat that their names could be publicly disclosed, one has to weigh that, which is what we did in this instance and therefore chose to take an alternative route and consult directly with the most important individuals. In this case we consulted the Supreme Court of Canada, the supreme court of Quebec, prominent members of the legal community, of course the Minister of Justice from Quebec, and other practitioners, and in some cases, retired judges, who weighed in on this important decision and gave us advice.
:
Those are the same reasons why the Liberal Party rejected it back then. I read it carefully. I am fully in favour of amending and improving the process. I think that is what we are all looking for.
I took careful note of the minister's remarks. He seems open to trying to find a formula that would, once and for all, let everyone say that, with good nominations, they are satisfied with the process and that it should be followed. That is not always the case.
I have several problems with this motion. Among them is the fact that it mentions Vic Toews and company. With all respect, I do not necessarily share a number of their opinions. Since I have problems with that, we were not off to a good start.
Then, things got worse when I read this:
[English]
...[t]here must be a public review of a short list of the nominees before a parliamentary committee”, and “[t]here must be Parliamentary ratification of the chosen nominee.”
[Translation]
Why do I have a problem with those two points? Because we then read:
[English]
The “public review of a short list of the nominees”...
[Translation]
I have been part of a confidential process twice. I have enormous respect for the confidential aspect of the process for the simple reason that the names of the people on the list are protected. I agree with the minister in that regard. I feel that even our Liberal colleagues should be in favour of that, not to make us happy, but to support the principle of confidentiality. I am always going to pay a lot of heed to that principle.
Just imagine. We considered the judges' nominations. We saw what happened with the list that was published in The Globe and Mail. Until the day I die, I will never confirm whether that was the list we had before us. Just for argument's sake, let us say that it was. Put yourself in the place of the judges who were not accepted. Like it or not, at that high level, being considered has an impact. People know each other. They know who among the judges on the Quebec Court of Appeal, for example, has a good reputation. The names go around every time a position opens up.
I know because I am a member of the Quebec Bar. My colleagues talk to each other. People talked to me. They told me that they were hoping that this name or that name was on our list. For me, the obligation to keep things confidential is extremely important. It protects the careers, present and future, of the candidates.
In addition, the process of public examination by a parliamentary committee has to be ratified by Parliament. That being the case, I want to avoid the American method as much as possible. I found that the minister, who was not in that position at the time, was mistaken. I am happy that, over the years, he has changed his view a little and that he has proposed this.
So I think that we have to work to find a better process. I was going to make a proposal. However, we may not have the time to deal with it immediately. I think, however, that I also have the right to make a motion while we are talking about a given subject, as long as it deals with the same topic. I do not think that my amendment to the motion will be passed, unless Mr. Casey is in favour of it.
So instead, I would propose that the text read as follows:
[English]
“That the Committee agree”—scratch everything else, and just write—“to review the process of nomination of judges in all courts under federal jurisdiction, including the Supreme Court of Canada, and to make a recommendation to Parliament on the best transparent process for said nominations.”
[Translation]
I think that this is the stage we have reached. We are two or three years away from the next appointment. There is no need for us to rush into something like this, but we should still come to grips with it.
With that said, I cannot vote for this motion because of the two basic reasons I mentioned. They are not solutions, in my view. I would never want to be seen to be in favour and for it to be said that I support that way of doing things.
:
Okay. We'll just talk about Mr. Casey's motion.
I agree with Madam Boivin that it's bizarre, to say the least, that the Liberal Party is proposing that this committee adopt the dissenting report of the Conservative Party from May 2004, a report dissenting to the report of the committee of the day, which was dominated by the majority Liberal members under the chairmanship of Mr. Lee, who was at the time a Liberal MP from Scarborough—Rouge River. I understand that it was substantially different from what his party and the former Liberal justice minister actually decided to do in terms of appointing members to the Supreme Court.
I note that in that committee report there were eight recommendations made by the committee to the government of the day about how it would select the members of the Supreme Court. In fact, it didn't follow the majority of those recommendations.
I don't know, but he could go and speak to some of his former colleagues, including the , the , the , and the , who are all currently in his caucus. In addition, there is Marlene Jennings, who was his predecessor as Liberal justice critic, and the Honourable Andy Scott, who was a member of cabinet at one time. All these people disagreed with what he is now proposing.
It's interesting to note that a significant number of the members of his current caucus disagreed in May of 2004 with what he is currently proposing, so he's apparently adopting a dissenting report that was voted down over 10 years ago by his own colleagues and is now presenting that as his party's suggestion on how the Supreme Court justices should be selected.
I can go through some of the recommendations, but one of them was that an advisory committee made up of one member of each of the parties would compile the list of candidates to be considered for the Supreme Court. I'm pretty sure that Mr. never did that, nor did any other justice minister that I'm aware of.
I find it bizarre. It's strange. It's certainly the first time in my history of serving as a member of the House of Commons that a member of another party has gone back into history, has dug out something that their own party turned down, something that was actually proposed in the past by some of my colleagues, and has then put it forward as something that the government of today should adopt going forward.
I think we heard from the minister his concern about what happened in the Nadon process. I was part of the process when Madam Justice Karakatsanis and Mr. Justice Moldaver were selected. That process went very well. Everyone signed a confidentiality agreement, everyone complied with it, and there were no leaks of any of the names. I agree with Madam Boivin that it's a real problem if the names are leaked, as we saw in The Globe and Mail.
I was quite shocked, personally, when I saw that list in The Globe and Mail. I remember from the time when I served on the committee how we were all admonished that we had to be extremely careful with everything we did, to make sure that in no way would any of those names be leaked, because clearly, first of all, it's like applying for any job. If you have a current job and are applying for another job, you don't necessarily want your current colleagues to know you're doing that.
Many of the people on the list are currently serving on other levels of court. Some of them are serving in law firms and in other places. The committee speaks to a wide range of people in the legal and judicial systems in Canada to get their views on each of those candidates. It obviously would compromise the advice the committee or the government would get from those it seeks advice from if they knew that the advice they were giving on these people would become public knowledge.
For all those reasons, I agree with Madam Boivin and I agree with the minister that this motion should be defeated. I think it is one of the strangest motions I have ever seen in my time here.
Thank you for those questions and those answers.
I have no more questioners, so I want to move to the supplementary estimates (B) votes.
ADMINISTRATIVE TRIBUNALS SUPPORT SERVICE OF CANADA
Vote 2b—Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada – Program expenditures..........$1
(Vote 2b agreed to)
COMMISSIONER FOR FEDERAL JUDICIAL AFFAIRS
Vote 1b—Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs—Operating expenditures..........$66,419
Vote 5b—Canadian Judicial Council—Operating expenditures..........$1,600,000
(Votes 1b and 5b agreed to)
Vote 1b—Operating expenditures..........$11,040,519
Vote 5b—Grants listed in the Estimates and contributions.........$38,950,000
(Votes 1b and 5b agreed to)
Vote 1b—Program expenditures..........$118,300
(Vote 1b agreed to)
The Chair: Shall the chair report votes 2b under the Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada, vote 1b and vote 5b under the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs, vote 1b and vote 5b under Justice, and vote 1b under the Supreme Court of Canada to the House?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
That will be done tomorrow. It won't be done by me. One of my colleagues, Mr. Dechert, is going to do it for us.
Thank you very much for coming today. I know we were interrupted briefly, but I appreciate everyone coming. I think virtually everyone got in a question at least in their area, so I appreciate that.
Thanks very much, and have a good weekend. Happy Thanksgiving. Go Seahawks go!
The meeting is adjourned.