Mr. Speaker, I will try to sum up what I have to say in five minutes.

Let us start with some history. The Supreme Court was created in 1875. It has been the final court of appeal for criminal cases in Canada since 1933, and for civil cases since 1949. The Supreme Court consists of eight puisne judges and a chief justice, who shall hold office during good behaviour until the age of 75. Of these nine judges, three shall be from Quebec, to ensure expertise in civil law, and tradition has it that, of the remaining six judges, three come from Ontario, two come from the western provinces and one comes from the Atlantic provinces.

The motion flows from this problem, in other words, that this is a tradition, not a requirement. As we saw in the past under Stephen Harper, the appointment of Justice Marc Nadon did not comply with the rules. In that case, there was a formal obligation under the law, because the three justices from Quebec must have been members of the Barreau du Québec for at least 10 years, which was not the case for Justice Nadon. That was a legal, constitutional obligation, but it was not respected at the time of his appointment. There are precedents here, and in this case, it was a requirement.

What we are talking about now arises from tradition and custom, not obligation, so it is understandable that people would be concerned. I think we need to deal with Supreme Court appointments once and for all to ensure that what the vast majority of the population wants is no longer a custom but an obligation. If we deal with this now, it will not come up every time there is a new government and every time there is a new appointment, because that just gets tiresome.

I also want to talk about the bill my colleague from Drummond introduced because another important factor for me when it comes to Supreme Court appointments is bilingualism. I think the current definition of bilingualism is sloppy: they need to understand French, but they do not necessarily need to speak it. That makes no sense to me. There are tests in both languages that can tell us if people know the other language.

For example, I once did some research into working abroad in the U.K. I had to take an English test and get a minimum score on it to work there. We can do the same thing here. There are tools to evaluate whether people are truly bilingual. Saying someone just has to understand French but does not need to speak it is not good enough. To me, that is ridiculous. I also want to point out that, to be appointed to the Supreme Court, a candidate must satisfy a number of conditions, including having been a member of a provincial bar association for at least 10 years.

In other words, that person has time to prepare. People are not being appointed to the Supreme Court two years out of law school. While practising, people can figure out whether they are interested in joining the Supreme Court later in their careers, and they can make learning the second language a priority if they have not already mastered both official languages.

As a francophone, if I had been a lawyer and I thought I might like to be appointed to the Supreme Court one day, I would have made sure to take English courses so that I was completely bilingual. It is the same thing for anglophones. This is an important part of it. People do not just magically end up on the Supreme Court. It is a long process. A lot of hard work goes into getting appointed to the Supreme Court. These people have time to prepare. They have worked in a number of fields and have had time to decide to learn the other language so that they have the qualifications needed to sit on the Supreme Court.

That is why it is important we move away from our traditional approach to appointing judges and make regional representation and bilingualism mandatory criteria. No longer should we need to rely on such voluntary traditions that can be observed or disregarded with each new government depending on which of our friends we may want to appoint. That needs to stop. We need to put rules in place and settle this issue once and for all.

By so doing, we will avoid having to challenge time and again appointments deemed inappropriate or otherwise not in the best interests of our justice system going forward.

Christine Moore

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