Ottawa – Cathy McLeod, Member of Parliament for Kamloops – Thompson – Cariboo says that the federal NDP is supporting divisive legislation given its latest initiatives and voting record in Parliament.

It began with NDP MP Yvon Godin’s Private Members’ Bill C-232, in which the Supreme Court Act will be amended to insist that all future appointees to our highest court be fluently bilingual. The bill will make it a prerequisite for justices to be able to hear all cases without the aid of translation.

“The problem with this bill is that it will restrict appointees to a very small number of bilingual legal scholars and lower court judges.  In addition, it has always been the practice that Supreme Court judges have the full support of translation services, written and oral, and that the proceedings are conducted in both official languages,” said McLeod.

“Our laws require that 3 judges be appointed from Quebec, with 3 from the entire West and Atlantic provinces. The chances of finding a large number of fully bilingual judges from BC, let alone Saskatchewan will be reduced to a handful with these changes.  The same goes for unilingual Quebec francophone judges who are fully qualified to be considered for the job,” stated McLeod.  “It’s a shame that the pool of candidates should be so severely limited to linguistic abilities over legal knowledge.”

Bill C-232 passed the House of Commons late last month with all three opposition parties voting for it. Presently it is before the Senate for consideration.

In another legislative matter, the Government introduced legislation called the Democratic Representation Bill.  This bill would add 30 additional seats to the House of Commons in response to the expanding populations of some provinces. Under the proposed legislation, Ontario would receive 18 new seats, Alberta would get 5 and BC 7, for a total of 338 seats.  If passed, the changes likely would be implemented in 2014.

In reaction to this new legislation the Bloc Quebecois introduced a motion in the house as follows:
“That the House denounce the fact that the government seeks to marginalize the Quebec nation by introducing a bill to decrease Quebec’s political weight in the House, and that it affirm that Quebec Members of Parliament, who represent a nation, must hold at least 25% of the seats in the House.”

“When it came time to vote on this motion, the NDP decided to abstain. Rather than send a clear message that all Canadian votes should hold equal weight, they turned their backs on fair representation by population, ” concluded McLeod.