Thank you.
I'm going to touch a bit on Mr. Cash's line of questioning, specifically with charter compliance.
I think what Mr. de Vlieger has been saying is that, as with all legislation or changes we bring forth, it is vetted through the legal process before the government brings it forward. Now whether it is subject to challenge in the court or not.... The vast majority of legislation that our government has put through certainly has been charter-compliant and has not even been challenged
Having said that, I would say to my friend and colleague Mr. Cash that the Canadian people do know that the government does not behave irresponsibly when it comes up with legislation. It comes up with legislation that is vetted through the legal process and gets that legal opinion. It was a positive legal opinion, which is why this measure is in this bill. Moving forward, should someone decide to challenge that, we will see how the courts will decide down the road. However, we're very confident in the legislation that we put through. In fact, in 100% of the cases, we have positive legal opinions from Justice and from the legal people within the department.
Now, I want to talk a bit about social assistance itself. One of the points that some members in the House have tried to bring up is that this will somehow impede the ability of asylum claimants to receive the social assistance they should be getting.
I want to hear from our officials on whether this legislative change, or this “facilitative change”, as you put it, is binding on the provinces. Do they have to put up specific timeframes for someone to be in their province before they are offered social assistance, or not?