It's been the case law since 1995. It has been on leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, which was refused. This is the state of the law since 1995 and this is what we told the provinces, that this is the state of the law and that this is merely clarification of existing law, and therefore there are no additional costs entailed in moving the bill forward, because the costs are already counted, if you like, in the existing provisions of the code. What we're avoiding here is costly and lengthy potential arguments, which have not arisen often, as to the interpretation of the code, having the potential for these debates to happen again and again before the provincial courts, so we propose clarification of the existing law.
That's why, in going to the jurisdictions, we've told them the intent here is to clarify the existing law. If anyone wants to take issue with whether that's the existing law, they would have had that opportunity. Nobody has challenged that assertion, so my appreciation of the situation is that the provinces recognized that this was the pre-existing requirement of the code and/or that the additional costs would be fairly minor.
We've had no indications from the jurisdictions that on the original way the amendments to the code were framed, they would have objections to this. When we change it to automatic, then that is a separate issue.
I'd like to point out as well, perhaps not to open up another issue, that under the Official Languages Act there are existing similar provisions and they too, since 1988, have been formulated as an on-request formulation so that the non-governmental party before a federal court, when confronted by the representatives of the state, can obtain a copy of the originating documents upon request.
So there is consistency in approach here in what we're doing in terms of the original amendment, and consistency as well with the case law that had gone forward.