The key aspect here, and I stated this in my opening remarks, is that if we go back to the charter, it is a negative rights document. It prevents the infringement of people's rights by the government. Litigation related to the charter, as well as other human rights litigation, is necessarily adversarial, and the government is on the other side.
The worst-case scenario for anyone who is involved in constitutional litigation or involved in this program would be to see the politicization of funding such that a case that's brought forward that has serious issues...the funding is limited or pulled for a political reason. That's where the privilege relationship is important, and that's what the committee must focus on. That transparency must be balanced with independence and the protection of the applicants to the extent that their litigation may not be damaged or interfered with because it isn't in favour of the government, which it may not necessarily be. It may run counter, and likely runs counter, to government interests. I think that's the key concern.
On the question of litigation privilege, the government has litigation privilege, and it's important for this committee to consider why parties that, because of their need, seek funding in order to access justice should have to give up their litigation privilege, and the equity concerns around that. This is because they access what, I would say, could be a small amount of funding compared to the total cost of litigation that a party might have to encounter in order to bring their claim forward.