There is a lot to your question. I'll try to cover as much as I can. My colleagues can help me on this one.
First of all, speaking of perceived conflict of interest, anything can be perceived as a conflict of interest. Even MPs can be perceived to be in conflict of interest when they make decisions: will this bring me support in my area; will it give me support to be re-elected? When you look at things, anybody can be perceived to be in a conflict of interest.
I have been here defending francophone rights practically all my life. Does being the chair of the board mean that I'm in a conflict of interest because I'm still promoting minority language rights in this country? Everyone can be perceived as being in some conflict of interest.
The important question is whether a person is in a conflict of interest. That's where people get into trouble. I can tell you that we check this very much within our organization, to make sure that nobody is in a conflict of interest and, as much as we can, is perceived as being in a conflict of interest. But you cannot stop the judgments of other people when they look at a program like ours; it's practically inevitable.
As to even-handedness, let us remind ourselves that we are never in an even-handed situation, because when people we fund go to the courts, they go against the federal government or one of the provincial governments that is using a huge amount of resources to thwart, stop, or put all kinds of hurdles in the road of the appellant seeking to get a clarification of their rights.
So even-handedness is a very unfair thing. If it were in place, then we would ask to get as much in the way of resources for those people who are appellants as the federal government is allowing itself to use. We see it right now, for example, in the court case of Caron in Alberta, where the provincial government is putting all kinds of hurdles in the road of Mr. Caron because they know the program is not going to exist anymore: let's make sure he has no means anymore to challenge the government in its application. That's one side; it's not even-handed on the side of the appellant.
As to your next question, related to whether we talked to the government about extending the program, no. We did not ask the government to please give us more money so we can fund REAL Women, for example, if that's what you're asking. The answer is no, we did not ask that.
What we're looking at in terms of the program is not a restrictive application of the rights. That's not our job. Our job is to see whether we can clarify and expand the rights of Canadians by the interpretation of the laws you have adopted. That's what we're doing.
If the federal government believes very strongly in what you've said, then create a program that is going to give money to REAL Women and other groups that are going to do this, or charge us with doing that too and give us double the money, and we'll give money to REAL Women to go on the other side, if that's what you believe in. But that's not the job that was given to us.