I argue in the paper, and I continue to believe, that you need a multi-faceted approach to access to justice, and legal aid is certainly part of that. Legal aid is a shrinking resource in this country. Ontario has probably the best legal aid in the country, and it's a system in which I've worked. It serves a very small segment of the population and it covers a very small area of legal services. I would suggest that legal aid, pro bono, and other access to justice initiatives are complements but they don't substitute or reproduce what a program like the court challenges program does. This links to your first question. I think the federal government can play a role in precisely this multi-faceted approach to access to justice that you've heard me say in connecting communities to their professional allies in order to give access to the courts.
A federal government that encourages and facilitates and provides the space for a community organization and engagement with the law is a federal government, I think, that is unique in the world and would be a model for delivering on the promises of liberal rights. We've seen in every western democracy that I'm familiar with a major gap between rights on paper and rights in the lived experiences of the population. This is something that our liberal democracies have failed to overcome, this major challenge of the apparent hypocrisy between the words of the law and the lived experiences.
I think the federal government can demonstrate that it wishes to overcome that gap by supporting the very communities that can empower themselves. It's not about handing money to lawyers to fight cases in court for or against government. I will point out that in my court challenges funded work, I was involved in an intervention in support of government legislation against a challenge from an organization that was seeking to do away with equality-positive legislation. The program both supports government efforts to litigate in favour of equality as well as to bring challenges to legislation.