I suppose for me the struggle is not the protection of official language rights. I strongly believe in that and in the enhancement of those, making sure that future generations of Canadians actually have facility in both languages. My struggle is more with respect to the best way of achieving it. Is it to deliver tax money to allow individual organizations to sue the federal government on issues relating to minority language rights, or is there a better way of addressing the concerns and aspirations that you have for your language?
One of the things I went back to look at was the mandate of the CCP, because it covers not only official minority language rights but also equality rights under the charter. I'll just quote from the Summative Evaluation of the CCP:
The main purpose of the Program is to clarify certain constitutional provisions relating to equality and language rights.
It refers to clarification, and one of the main criticisms that's been levelled at the program is, and again I quote:
...the Program, as currently delivered, will only support cases that protect and advance rights covered by the Program. In other words, a group or individual that would present legal arguments calling for a restrictive application of these rights would not receive CCP funding.
That applies to both official and minority language rights as well as equality rights.
If you had a preference to either use taxpayers' dollars to help you with lawsuits to try to establish those rights or, on the other side, you had programs and initiatives that actually did a better job of doing what you wanted to do without having to resort to the courts, which would you choose?