I think constitutional development is very, very important. It's not magic and it doesn't deliver as soon as you have a constitution, by any means. We operated quite nicely for a long time without the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. People were treated well, we respected the rule of law, etc., but what the charter did was focus public attention on some of these values. I think it developed a richer culture in Canada for human rights and for respect for human rights.
That's what constitutions can do, but many countries of the world have constitutions and they're the worst countries. They're some of the outlaws of the world, right? So there's no magic in a constitution. Along with a constitution must come the implementation of the values the constitution contains.
As I was saying earlier, things like access to justice have to go hand in hand with a constitution, because what good is it if the people it's designed to protect can't access the very body that is going to give them a remedy for the violation of the constitution? In Canada, we had the court challenges program. I was a proponent of that, because it was designed to give those people who are suffering the abuses the charter is designed to protect them from an ability to go before a judge and ask for a remedy. Otherwise, what's the point, because by definition, disadvantaged people do not have the resources to get in front of expensive courts, especially in our system.
Now, even to have a simple family law matter decided in court is minimum $25,000, minimum. By the time you get your documents filed, your lawyer hired, a couple of visits paid for, and you go to court, you're looking at at least that kind of money. Who has that kind of money? Certainly not people who are downtrodden. The prostitutes I was talking about earlier or children who are being abused or people who are being trafficked don't have that kind of money. Similarly, the person who's being sexually harassed in her minimum-wage job--does she have money to get to court? No.
So access to justice is important in a constitution. You can't protect gender equality or racial equality and then give no tools for people to have those rights respected. So legal aid is important. People's courts are important, if that's the alternative from formal courts, but those people's courts have to run appropriately, so they need education and rules to go by and some structures to work within.
Sure, constitutions serve as a framework. They're a bedrock, they're a reference point. They are something whereby people who are suffering in jail without access to a lawyer or being not charged can point to and accuse the government of not fulfilling the obligations they have promised to fulfill.