Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to come and testify today.
John Carpay is my name. I'm the executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation. We are four and a half years old, as a foundation. We arose in support of the litigation in British Columbia launched by a gentleman named James Robinson, also known as Nisga'a Indian Chief Mountain, or in Nisga'a, Sga'nisim Sim'augit . Our foundation has more recently decided to expand its mandate and take on other cases and research projects.
Doing my research on the Law Commission of Canada, and looking at the website, I note that the mission of the Law Commission of Canada is to engage Canadians in the renewal of the law to ensure that it is relevant, responsive, effective, equally accessible to all, and just. I've always thought this was the mission of Parliament. Again from the website, the Law Commission is mandated to systematically review the laws of Canada to determine whether they continue to meet the needs of society. I put it to you that this is also your job as MPs—to systematically review the laws of Canada to determine whether they continue to meet the needs of society.
As for engaging Canadians in the renewal of the law, that too is something that you do every day when you listen to your constituents—hear from them by e-mail, phone, fax, personal contact, and so on. To judge by their mission, there is no need for this organization or for it to be funded, because this mission is already being fulfilled by you who are seated here today.
Some might point out, correctly, that Parliament needs help. With that I would agree. But Parliament is able to get help from numerous sources. For example, we have the universities, the law faculties. We have law professors, who, when not busy teaching, are paid to work full time in reviewing, studying, and analyzing the law. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of law professors who are doing this work every day. We have public policy research institutes. We have the Institute for Research Public Policy, in Montreal. We have the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. We have the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, the Montreal Economic Institute, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies. All of these research groups, these think tanks, have researched on legal topics, and there's nothing that stops them from doing so.
We also have advocacy groups. There are women's groups of various kinds—feminist groups, traditionalist groups. We have environmentalist groups. There are all kinds of advocacy groups that are more than happy to provide the government with legal research upon request.
Last, but not least, we have all the government departments. All of them—not just the justice department—have their legal components.
Everything that the Law Commission is providing is already done elsewhere. There is also a difference in accountability. If you have the Frontier Centre for Public Policy doing research, it is accountable to its supporters and its donors. If it's not producing quality research, then the donors are not going to keep giving it money. For this program, however, there is no accountability. The same goes for advocacy groups. There are various advocacy groups that regularly produce legal research and recommendations on the reform of the law.
Another part of the mission of this group is to recommend improvements in the law. Who could be against that? Nobody. But not everybody is agreed on what constitutes an improvement. Not everybody has a similar vision, a similar perspective.
Today, I see before me representatives of the four political parties. There are at least four very different visions of what constitutes an improvement, of what is justice. There are different perspectives and there is no unity on the subject.
It's very easy to say that the Law Commission recommends improvements, but not everybody will agree on what constitutes an improvement. Looking at some of the previous recommendations of the Law Commission and its predecessor, not everybody would agree that a law to allow abortion on demand is an improvement. Some would think it is, some would think it's not. Not everybody would agree that eliminating incest as a crime is an improvement. Some would think it is, some would not. Lowering the age of consent from 18 down to 14, decriminalizing prostitution, replacement marriage with registration, and changing the definition of marriage are all things that some people would regard as improvements, while other people would not.
The question I have is whether it's fair to compel all taxpayers to contribute to recommendations that might be non-partisan in the sense that they're not necessarily strictly limited to one political party, but they're certainly not neutral, independent, objective recommendations. They're recommendations based on the views of the authors who prepared the research.
For these reasons, I think it's a very wise move to end the funding for the Law Commission of Canada, hopefully followed in the future by the repeal of the legislation that brings it into force, because it duplicates and replicates what is already available elsewhere, starting first and foremost with the very description of the mission of the Law Commission. That mission is pretty much akin to the job that Parliament is supposed to be doing, and if Parliament wants further input, it is available from many different sources—from the law professors, from the public policy research institutes, from the advocacy groups, and from the government's own departments.
Whether the commission made Canada look good around the globe, I don't know. If I were working for the commission, I suppose I might be inclined to say that myself. But small meetings take place all across the country, and they will continue to take place without the Law Commission.
I find it interesting to hear the Law Commission described as small. It has close to a dozen staff. I would be thrilled if I had a dozen staff working at our foundation. We could get a lot more work done. A budget of more than $3 million per year would also be a great thing to have. But if we ever do have that some day in the future, it will be because Canadians voluntarily contributed to our foundation and to our mission, which is to promote the constitutional freedom of Canadians through education, communication, and litigation.
In conclusion, nobody is suffering from the termination of funding, except for those individuals who agree with the recommendations that the commission has come out with or might continue to come out with in the future.
I welcome your questions.
Merci.