Wilfrid Laurier (Prime Minister; President of the Privy Council)
Liberal
Sir WILFRID LAURIER.
is more interested In this legislation than any other. I think we are not at all meeting the exigencies of the case by this amendment. So far as we are concerned, it is inconvenient and I think unworkable to confine the jurisdiction to the judges. In fact, I do not see why we should surround with these restrictions the case contemplated by the Act any more than those cases in which persons have a right to launch a grievance against individuals in any other case. With all due deference to the right lion. First Minister, 1 do not see any more danger of international complications arising under this Act than under half a dozen other cases in which the law is set in force by individuals with a free hand. There are numbers of cases that will occur to any lawyer, just as important as this, in which parties need not go to the Attorney General or get the consent of anybody, but they take the responsibility; and there are safeguards against the abuse of the process of the courts in those eases as in others. I do not look at all with favour on the omission to extend this jurisdiction to the magistrates.