I would argue in fact that the court hasn't completely adjudicated on the extent to which the government has an obligation to provide civil legal aid funding. In the G. (J.) case before the Supreme Court, the court dealt with an element of that in child protection proceedings. In Christie, what the court said was that under the rule of law there is no generalized right to legal services, but to the extent to which in other circumstances there's a constitutional right....
My specialty in my area of study as a post-doctoral fellow is women's constitutional rights. What I look at there is in terms of the right to equality. Is the right to equality being satisfied when there's such underfunding of civil legal aid, which is mostly used by women, for example.
Looking at section 7 and the right to security of the person for women, is that being satisfied when abused women can't get away from their abuser because they can't access legal aid to have their cases adjudicated? So I would push back from that a little bit in terms of, not talking about the spirit of the charter, talking about the actual provisions of the charter and what is required by the provincial and federal governments in that regard.