Yes.
Mr. Chair, this provision is added in order to protect the inherent purpose of this provision. The inherent purpose of this provision is to allow Canadians to bring an action to seek recuperation or protection or restoration of a damaged area if a federal law has been violated. These are public interest applications. They are not applications seeking personal gain. There's no provision for receiving any kind of compensation or damages to the plaintiff. The very purpose is to bring the action in the public interest to ensure that where a federal act is violated and damage has occurred, the person who violated would be required to restore and so forth.
Similar to the provision mentioned before previously under the bill, it enables a litigant who brings forward a case and does not have legal counsel. From my experience, it's very hard for public interest litigants to obtain counsel, and there are very many occasions when they proceed on their own. So the intention is to compensate them for their time and provide for an advance cost award if the court feels it's in the public interest to proceed with that action. Again, that's completely within the discretion of the court if they think that the case is so important and the request for costs is critical.
In all likelihood, from experience, that would include costs to bring forward expert witnesses to speak to the damage caused and perhaps what the cost for restoration would be.
When you get to subclause (3), it specifically says this action is intended as a test case or to raise a novel point of law, and the very point is to clarify in law what duties and responsibilities are and to protect the public trust.