That's a very good question. I tried to explain my role earlier.
There is a very important difference with the tribunal. We are like the court--it's not a court, but a quasi-judicial board. We hear the matters.
It's the commission that educates the public and advocates certain positions. The commission is certainly free to come here and share its view on section 13, that they think section 13 should be amended in such and such a fashion. That is for the commission.
When the commission was created, it started out of piecemeal legislation that was anti-discriminatory legislation found, for example, in the Ontario human rights act, that you couldn't give insurance, say, to Jewish people or you couldn't sell land to Jewish people. There were provisions in various statutes that were very discriminatory. Then in the 1970s the whole act was put together to create the Canadian Human Rights Act, with a commission to educate Canadians about the virtue of the act.
Prior to that there were also criminal and quasi-criminal provisions. Those were not found to be very effective, because if somebody was found to be in breach of the act, all they could do was incarcerate the person or give them a fine. Then the commission was created, and the mandate of the commission is multi-fold: it's to educate, investigate complaints that come before it, and then to actually take carriage of those complaints before the tribunal. So we are independent.
In one case a number of years ago, there was a challenge to the jurisdiction or the independence of the tribunal because our budget was coming out of the commission's budget. It was felt that we were too close to the commission. That was amended and changed so that we are very independent of the commission.
For example, I don't liaise with the commission on an individual case, but it is my hope that I can liaise with the commission on administrative matters where I hope that we can expedite hearings and give access to justice to parties quicker and in a more efficient fashion.