Mr. Chairman, members of Parliament, thank you for the opportunity to bring forward for the record Canada Family Action Coalition's concerns and position about funding a program such as the court challenges program.
Let me first state that we agree with the position the government has taken in suspending the program. We'd ask to have it not reinstated. I'll provide some reasons why we'd like to see that.
There are three principles on which we believe a program such as CCP should not be funded with tax dollars. First, the very principle of section 15 of our charter, equality before the law and under the law, should and would require that all citizens in Canada be provided equal funding. A program that gives government funds, in fact tax dollars, to a non-profit organization so that the non-profit organization can then pick and choose who they wish to fund violates the very principle of equality. Funding for only some people or some groups creates an inequality of access to the law. Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in part reads, “equal benefit of the law without discrimination”. I would read that as equal benefit of the law without discrimination.
The CCP website states that one of its goals is to help disadvantaged groups prepare cases and file court actions against the government. So in essence, when in someone's opinion there appears to be a violation of some right, they will fund. The principle that they espouse to be one of the fundamental reasons for existing is equality, which they functionally do not deliver, I believe.
Some scholars have said that the dialogue in a court action is a dialogue between courts and the public. But when certain groups are funded, the dialogue really is not between courts and the public; it's between specific individuals and the courts.
Using tax dollars to create an advantage for a select few is a violation, in my estimation, of the charter. It's also an inappropriate way of resolving perceived disparities in the Constitution. We've seen a number of cases where government money has been spent for various reasons that I believe even the Auditor General has questioned.
Second, we do have concerns about how society resolves disparities, or perceived disparities, in the Constitution. If you review the cases that were funded by tax dollars, you will see that in most of those cases, I believe, those issues should have been resolved through dialogue with our elected Parliament, not with the power of one court imposing its unilateral view on all of us.
We are calling for an end to tax-sponsored court resolutions that prevent democratic function through Parliament. I would ask you to think about the stringent safeguards built into our Constitution for changing the Constitution. Why are they so stringent? To protect against a few people, elected or non-elected, from altering the law at the whim of someone or some group wanting some change. The amending formula holds that citizens--many of them, and in fact a majority--must be from various provinces, and they are people who are required to amend the Constitution. Yet some of the government's funding has encouraged certain groups to take actions and lobby through courts so that we can have that Constitution altered through court cases.
The third point I make is that if this or a similar program were to be reinstated, we would then ask this: who is qualified to determine the “disadvantaged” groups, as the CCP calls them? I see no great authority in the list of names on the CCP website. Does one of them or all of them have special qualifications to determine who meets the criteria for disadvantaged persons or groups? The equality advisory committee lists certain people, but from a very limited number of segments of society. Are these people duly qualified to decide which group gets taxpayers' dollars?
As I mentioned earlier, funding one side of a case but not another side of the same challenge creates, not resolves, inequality. I can name numerous disadvantaged people from my perspective: seniors, the handicapped, children, religious groups, left-handed people like me who can't find left-handed scissors, Ford owners, even citizens who are in Canada illegally. Would all of these people get funding for their challenges? Who decides who's disadvantaged?
The government has made the right and proper decision to stop funding the creation of inequality through this program. No one has a charter right or a guarantee to taxpayers' dollars. In fact, the attitude of entitlement to tax dollars has to be stopped.
As the Canada Family Action Coalition, we respectfully ask that you, the committee, recommend in your report that no funding of inequality-producing programs be given any longer.
Thank you.