Gardner Agrees With Godin, HoC & CBA On Bilingual SCC

Gardner: "Bilingualism weighs heavily in any appointment, as it should."
Canadian Bar Association: "The CBA adds that bilingualism should be one aspect of merit in selecting candidates for appointment to the Supreme Court."
As for the rest, Gardner et.al. might want to timewarp from 1969 to 2010, as Hébert noted, and as Comartin made clear: "I had better put this on the record. I sat through the last four appointments to the Supreme Court. The last two rounds have been the prairie provinces and then the Maritimes. We're sworn to secrecy in sitting on those panels, but the reality is that there were more than enough candidates—I don't think I'm disclosing any surprises here—from both of those jurisdictions to meet that high test of bilingualism. I don't think I can say anything more than that without going into the specifics of their credentials, but there was not a problem with having a significant number of qualified candidates."

Further to that, I recommend the illiterate brush up on their first language skills, or get someone to read to them, and remedy their ignorance by actually doing some research and reading the debates. I conclude by quoting Mauril Bélanger:

I hope we can all agree that our society is not static; we live in a society and a world that is constantly evolving. Everything changes. We hope that it is for the better. Pressure leads to change, and we always hope that it improves the situation. So it is not surprising that our laws reflect this desire to improve our society and to improve the lives of our fellow citizens.

Today we are looking at the results of enacting of Canada's Official Languages Act in 1969, over 40 years ago. In those 40 years, the application of this legislation has continuously evolved, so much so that no one now opposes the notion that Canada has two official languages, French and English. That just shows how our society and our federation are always evolving.

In 1988, the Conservative government at the time, led by the right hon. Brian Mulroney, supported by the official opposition at the time, even made two amendments to this act. Furthermore, in 2005, another amendment was made by the Liberal government of the day, supported by the official opposition, which was led by the current Prime Minister of Canada. This shows that on both sides of the House, whether it is a Liberal government with a Conservative opposition, or a Conservative government with a Liberal opposition, we all seem to agree on the nature of this linguistic duality and its evolving nature.

I encourage all parties in the House to support my colleague's bill, which is fully in line with our country's evolution.