Evidence of meeting #116 for Canadian Heritage in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was funding.
A video is available from Parliament.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
4:50 p.m.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
The interpreters seem to be having problems following Mr. Brodie at the moment. Would it be possible to check whether everything is working?
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
4:50 p.m.
Bloc
Martin Champoux Bloc Drummond, QC
Mr. Chair, we are told that Ms. Thomas's microphone is still on, and that causes problems for the interpreters. That is the explanation the interpreter has just given us.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Kevin Waugh
We're going to suspend for a minute. I'm sorry, Mr. Brodie. We'll be back in a second.
Ms. Thomas, you have 4:01 left. That's where we stopped the clock.
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Kevin Waugh
We will resume.
As you know, we've had some issues with sound in the House of Commons and committees. If you ask a question, please shut off your mic after the question is asked. Then we can move forward with the answers. It's trial and error, as you all know.
Ms. Thomas, do you want to ask the question again? It's been several minutes. Mr. Brodie has tremendous capability, but not the rest of us, including me. I forgot your question.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Sure.
Mr. Brodie, in your opening remarks you commented on the lack of transparency around the selection of cases. Obviously, some are chosen and some are not. There are winners and there are losers at the end of the day. I'm curious to hear your further comments with regard to the problematic nature of this lack of transparency.
5 p.m.
Professor, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Yes, it's very difficult for a number of reasons.
First of all, for those of us who are observers—and I've been an observer going back almost 30 years now—when the program cut off information to the public about who it funded and who it didn't in real time, it became impossible to do a proper analysis of what the impact of the Court Challenges Program was. Was it meeting the objectives set out by the funding document? Was it serving the public interest in a broader sense?
I would say that this is particularly difficult in cases involving one section of the Charter of Rights coming into conflict with another section of the Charter of Rights. The government has, if I understand correctly, legislation pending before Parliament on online harms. That legislation—I don't want to get into the details, since it's still being debated—will inevitably end up in court, with both freedom of expression claims and equality rights claims. It's very difficult for the groups that are on the freedom of expression side to argue the case if they think in the back of their heads that there's a possibility that the equality rights arguments being advanced in those cases are being funded by the federal government when their arguments are not.
To those of us who are observers, that's the kind of transparency issue that I think goes beyond, and goes to the actual implementation of the Charter of Rights and the guarantee of constitutionally protected rights and freedoms in the country.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Thank you.
What is the fix to this, then? How could greater transparency be created?
5 p.m.
Professor, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Well, as my colleague Professor Sigalet has said, there's nothing to stop the program from simply waiving the privilege it has claimed in various court cases over the years and to do what every other government funding program does in real time, which is to let us know, once the decision is made or after a couple of days of edit and so forth, through press releases which cases are being funded, to what extent those cases are being funded and the dollar value that's involved.
The program used to do this. It did until about 2000. That's how I was able to do my original academic research. Once that research was under way, there was this claim of privilege, which was novel at the time.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Thank you.
Mr. Sigalet, you made a couple of comments in this regard, but perhaps you could expand on how this bill could be revised to make it less partisan in nature.
5 p.m.
Assistant Professor, As an Individual
There could be restrictions or new rules on partisanship to require bipartisan oversight. You could require a committee like this to review the program and appointments and ensure that there's better political representation from across the political spectrum.
One of my colleagues is Andrew Irvine. I'm really lucky to have him as a senior colleague in my department here at UBCO. He was the president of the BC Civil Liberties Association for a little while, back before the recent president said, “Burn it all down”, and he told me that the BCCLA used to have a rule that you had to have representatives from each political party, card-holding partisan members of each political party, approve a case before it went forward.
There are ways of experimenting with a model like that. You could either write that into this kind of statute or just require it to be an informal thing in the culture of the organization. Those are two options.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Rachael Thomas Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Thank you, Mr. Sigalet.
Just briefly, I'd like to move a motion. It's standard. It's already been put on notice. It reads as follows:
That, pursuant to the Order of Reference from the House dated Thursday, February 29, 2024, the Committee invite the Minister of Heritage to appear for no fewer than 2 hours regarding the Main Estimates 2024-2025, and that this meeting take place no later than May 31, 2024.
5 p.m.
Conservative
5 p.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Kevin Waugh
I think it has for months. It's the same one that was tabled on March 12.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
Okay, it's the same one that's been tabled.
Just give us a moment to take a look.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
It's on the motion, right?
I have no issue with having the minister come. I think what we would like to do is propose an amendment that it be one hour for officials and one hour for the minister, as has been the standard custom.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Kevin Waugh
That's the million-dollar question. It has to be before the end of May.
What do you think, Clerk?
April 30th, 2024 / 5:05 p.m.
The Clerk
I can reach out to the minister's office and get their availability for you.
