Thank you very much.
Thank you for the presentation you gave this morning.
I represent a region with a significant Franco-Ontarian population. As an anglophone, I know that minority rights were not acquired due to the efforts of the majority. Language rights and French schools were obtained because minorities fought for their convictions. And that fight is ongoing.
And I think this principle, to me, is at the very heart of the discussion we've been having here in terms of the conversation around the table.
The principle that has been raised by some of my Conservative colleagues and some of their witnesses is that if we allow the principle that minority rights need support to be enacted, to be defended, to be made real, that somehow that takes away from the rights of the majority. In other words, if we're going to have a court challenges program, then let's ensure that every single person, regardless of race, creed, or financial ability is able to access it. Otherwise, the few minority groups that do access these rights somehow have an unfair advantage over the majority. From the discussions we've had with witnesses, it seems to me that it strikes at the very heart of our notion of a Canadian system, in which we do recognize the value of certain rights that have to be protected and fought for.
One of the issues that came up was language rights. Again, in my region, there is the fight we've had for proper francophone services. Some of our witnesses have challenged that notion. Maybe it's unfair that we have certain language rights identified. What about, for example, the issue of Korean immigrants coming here? Why shouldn't they have the same rights?
I'm wondering if you think that this attack on the court challenges program is actually part of a broader view of how we should monitor rights in Canada and whether the attacks we've heard on court challenges--that it was conflict-of-interest-ridden, that it was going after crazy special interest groups, the kind of stuff I heard on talk radio--are actually part of a much simpler attack, which is the notion that certain minority rights need to be protected in this country in order to maintain the sense of what we have as a Canadian society.