Mr. Speaker, the government is extremely proud of the quality of appointments made today to our superior courts across the country.
The Government of Canada recognizes the importance of supporting and assisting the development of the official language minority communities. To that end, in June 2008 the government announced the road map to Canada's linguistic duality, which is an unprecedented government-wide commitment with a budget of $1.1 billion based on the two pillars of participation of all in linguistic duality and support for official language minority communities in the priority sectors of health, justice, immigration, economic development, arts and culture. Unfortunately, the hon. member did not support that budget, but it happened.
As the government has stated in the past, the overriding principle guiding the selection of members of the judiciary, including those of the highest court, is that of merit, and we are proud of that.