It depends on what the objective is. If it's for conducting a consultation on the relation...for example, you're right, you're not looking at litigation fees. A case before a human rights tribunal is generally recognized to be a lot cheaper than one that might require a long list of transcripts because the case has been appealed several times and is before the Supreme Court of Canada. The court challenges program, I understand, provides a maximum of $30,000 for cases that would widely be recognized as costing, depending on the nature of the claim and what's involved and whether or not you need to see all the transcripts, and those kinds of thing, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars.
I'm personally not a lawyer, so I've only heard this anecdotally.