Wednesday, October 3, 2001

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Elmwood-Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I have just a brief comment on Bill C-30, formerly Bill C-40. It is a bill, as members will know, to establish a body to provide administrative services to the Federal Court of Appeal, the Federal Court, the Court Martial Appeal Court and the Tax Court of Canada.

  The principle goal of the legislation, as I understand it, is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the administration of these courts while at the same time preserving the appropriate balance between judicial independence and financial accountability.

  I understand that pursuant to a seminal case on judicial independence known as Valente v The Queen, the Supreme Court of Canada itself has indicated that the proposed structure satisfies in its mind the constitutional test for institutional independence because this would certainly be one of the concerns people might have about the legislation.

  The legislation follows again, as I understand it, upon the recommendation of a former auditor general who had recommended a complete merger of the Federal Court and the Tax Court of Canada as a means to address the administrative inefficiencies he identified but the government decided not to go this far. In my judgment it was probably right in not listening totally to the recommendations of the auditor general.

  I might say, in this context, that I sometimes find, as I have said in the past, that the auditor general goes beyond what is required and goes much farther down the road in policy making and policy recommendation than I feel the auditor general ought to. I find it is often the case that the auditor general's office not only identifies inefficiencies or problems but then goes on to make recommendations, almost like an independent policy think-tank. I have had correspondence with previous auditor generals on this but I do not want to grind that particular political axe this afternoon.

  All I want to say is that although the bill is lengthy in terms of how much paper it consumes, the idea is pretty simple. The sooner we get this to committee and deal with it the better.