Justice Committee on April 19th, 2016

[Sarah Lugtig]

I don't know if we would answer the question exactly as phrased, but certainly, with regard to the desire to have the program extended to provincial law and policy in terms of equality rights challenges, part of the concern there is that there are certain issues, particularly issues affecting poor people, people of low income, or socially disadvantaged people, which are more often under provincial jurisdiction. In that sense, it would affect a significant group of people whose issues are not necessarily being addressed under the current program.

[Gerald Chipeur]

On the issue of disability and access to the public square, if you will, access to justice for those who are disabled, I think that a court challenges program may focus our attention just to the charter on human rights when I think that, in fact, Parliament and the provincial legislatures should be looking at their building codes and looking at other areas of law because the cost of litigation and the cost of going to the Human Rights Commission is expensive. If, instead, we're focusing on legislation that is much broader and actually much more important to those who are disabled, I think you would find that the money we spend on governing would be much more effective for those who are impacted.

[Cara Zwibel]

I'm not sure I have much to add, maybe just the group that I mentioned in terms of those who are incarcerated. That's certainly a population that faces significant barriers in accessing justice. We frequently hear from inmates who.... I know it's not a population that tends to breed a lot of sympathy, but people who are denied access to health services they need, people who are denied accommodation for disabilities they might have, and people who are denied religious accommodations have issues that I think deserve to be addressed.

[Mark Power]

I could add that geographic distribution was an important consideration under the old program and is under the current language rights program. We can't have all equality challenges coming out of Toronto or Montreal. There have to be some cases coming from across the country. I think that's an important public policy objective, as a federation.

I think there is a link there, Mr. Bittle, with Mr. Rankin's question. Advance cost awards would be certainly a second best because government can't ensure that geographic objectives, for example, are taken into account. If government takes the lead with the court challenges program, then it can better control where that money is spent and include or impose parameters as to how that money is spent. If it's advance cost awards, then government is always responding, and I think that's not an advisable way, or it's too much of a risky way, to try to implement public policy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much.

We've completed this round of questions. If it's okay with the panel, I just want to mop up two questions that were asked before. I didn't catch the answer and I just want to understand.

To the Canadian Bar Association, I'd like to clarify that what you are saying is that equality cases—assuming it's section 15 or assuming that we expand it to section 7 and section 2 as well—should be treated the same as language rights cases with respect to the fact that, if they violate the charter right, we can challenge provincial laws based on the violation of the charter right, which is allowed for language cases and not for equality cases. Is that what you're saying?

[Sarah Lugtig]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Good.

Professor Chipeur, I am a bit confused also on one question that I think Mr. Rankin asked you.

With respect to the issue of the Carter case that you cited several times with respect to costs that were awarded by the court under Carter, under paragraph 140, I think you said, they awarded costs against the Attorney General of Canada and the Attorney General of British Columbia. The court set a four-pronged task that was incredibly limiting in terms that it had to be an incredible public policy issue that benefits all of society, and the case can never have been litigated otherwise, etc., and you would only find this out at the end of the case, meaning that you'd have to go before a judge on this incredibly unusual case to award costs.

I don't quite understand how you are arguing that this is a substitute for court challenges that allows a case to go forward from the beginning, as opposed to waiting until the end to get these very unusual costs. Could you just explain that?

[Gerald Chipeur]

There are two points. The first is that, when you have limited resources within the Department of Justice to spend on making sure the laws are compliant with the charter, my recommendation is that you spend the money here in Parliament rather than in the courts. That's the first point.

The second point is that when you do spend money, for example, in a case where, if you had a charter challenges program similar to the language program.... In British Columbia there were some challenges based upon very thin evidence. The Government of British Columbia has spent probably millions of dollars defending against a case where there wasn't a lot of evidence. So if the federal government does put some money out there for lawyers, lawyers are going to take it and run. You need to keep in mind that there are cost consequences to everything you do.

My position is based upon my view that this is where you should make those decisions if you're going to spend the money, and yes, that means I'm opposed to any program. That's why I can live with the limited Supreme Court of Canada view, because I'm of the view that there should be no program.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

We're going to recess until the next panel, and I want to thank you all so much for coming.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

I'd like to ask the people for the next panel to come forward.

[Margaret Parsons, Executive Director, African Canadian Legal Clinic]

Good morning. Thank you very much for the opportunity to present before this panel.

This submission has been prepared for the purpose of communicating the African Canadian Legal Clinic's interest in supporting the Government of Canada's decision to reinstate and update the court challenges program.

The ACLC is active in the area of constitutional equality and strongly supports the reintroduction and modernization of the court challenges program as a critical means to enhance access to justice for the African Canadian and other racialized communities. Access to justice is a critically important value to African Canadians as a historically marginalized community.

Along with indigenous peoples and European settlers from France and England, African descendants are a founding people of Canada. African descendants have always had a meaningful presence in Canada, from the early 15th century up to Confederation and into the present.

After 206 years of legalized enslavement of Africans in what is now Canada, slavery was abolished, and African Canadians had to contend with slavery's afterlife by being forced to face legal and de facto segregation in housing, schooling, and employment, and exclusion from public places such as theatres and restaurants. These racist practices were reinforced by a justice system that often served to keep African Canadians in their place.

The black experience continues to be one of extreme marginalization and disadvantage: restricted access to housing; discriminatory victimization by education and child welfare systems; social criminalization; high levels of unemployment; disproportionate and alarming rates of poverty; and near total exclusion and chronic devaluing of African Canadians in all areas of Canadian social, economic, political, and cultural life.

After 12 years of the Harper government, we have only seen these conditions worsen for blacks in Canada, as publicly funded support for precedent-setting challenges of laws, policies, and practices that facilitate and deepen black marginalization almost entirely evaporated.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

We'll pause for a second to let them take their seats. Please, join us.

Don't worry, Mrs. Parsons. Your time has stopped for the moment.

Welcome, Ms. Levesque and Mr. Rae. It is a pleasure to have you here. We are in the middle of statements. To allow you time to gather yourselves, we are starting with Mrs. Parsons, then we'll go to Mr. Mia, and then we'll come back to you.

Mrs. Parsons, please continue.

[Margaret Parsons]

Thank you, sir.

Reinstating and modernizing the court challenges program will serve to enable long-standing inequities facing the African Canadian community to be more fairly, effectively, and correctively addressed through the Canadian court system. This is particularly true when considering that a disproportionately high number of African Canadians live on the margins of social and economic inclusion, are impoverished, precariously housed, and dramatically overrepresented in all levels of the criminal justice system, including provincial and federal prisons.

To address these conditions, it is critical that a modernized CCP not be embedded with procedural hurdles to obtain access to the resources it can avail. In other words, where there are cases, for instance, where one or more individuals from a historically disadvantaged group is facing a significant limitation or loss to their life, liberty, or security of the person, partly in connection with their charter-protected identity, unduly onerous procedural and eligibility requirements should not bar access to support from the CCP.

The following are also considerations that the Government of Canada should take very seriously as it undertakes to reinstate the court challenges program.

First, access to justice must include providing resources to support the enforcement of charter-focused remedies and decisions of our courts. For instance, racial profiling and illegal searches of individuals continue to take place at alarming rates, despite the existence of jurisprudence that forbids the continuation of these practices.

Gathering sufficient Canadian-based and focused social science evidence to support equality rights challenges is an extremely costly exercise. Undertaking community consultations and hiring expert witnesses to produce reports and provide testimony on pressing issues like anti-black racism comes at a prohibitive cost to the overwhelming majority of black African Canadian individuals and organizations.

It is critical that the court challenges program be an arm's-length institution from the Government of Canada. It should be a stand-alone, not-for-profit organization, as it was in its previous iteration. This will allow for greater independence and garner considerable trust and confidence in the CCP as a resource to turn to for support for charter-based court challenges.

Further to the point of accessibility of the CCP, the ACLC feels strongly that the program should not be housed in an academic institution. While much important work is done within academia, the general public and especially the collective African Canadian community, which experiences high levels of social and economic exclusion, will not feel that the CCP is a welcoming and receptive institution for them to access if it is housed in a university.

Alternative dispute resolution is an important part of our legal system, but it should not be actively encouraged or supported by the CCP where the matter being challenged is systemic in nature. The reason we take this position is that ADR prevents the establishment of much-needed equality jurisprudence that meaningfully serves to address and uproot systemic discrimination and inequality.

To ensure stability and continuity of the CCP, the Government of Canada should establish an endowment for the program through a legislative framework. This is to ensure that subsequent governments cannot so easily dismantle this vital access to justice program as was done by the Harper government.

The scope of the CCP should be extended beyond federal jurisdiction but should also include matters that have systemic impact across provinces. This, we feel, is instrumental to helping the court challenges program fulfill its potential to address the equality deficit facing African Canadians and far too many other historically disadvantaged groups.

In conclusion, to support our submission's call for the aforementioned enhancement to the court challenges program, I refer to the following Supreme Court of Canada's jurisprudence. In Tranchemontagne the court stated the following, “Human rights remedies must be accessible in order to be effective.”

In another Supreme Court decision, Hryniak, the Supreme Court also stated that, “Ensuring access to justice is the greatest challenge to the rule of law in Canada today.”

Finally, in Fischer, the Supreme Court also recognized the existing barriers when it stated the following:

The sorts of barriers to access to justice...may relate to either or both of the procedural and substantive aspects of access to justice. The most common barrier is an economic one, which arises when an individual cannot bring forward a claim because of the high cost that litigation would entail in comparison to the modest value of the claim. However, barriers are not limited to economic ones: they can also be psychological or social in nature.

Reading these Supreme Court decisions together, the ACLC argues that access to justice is a fundamental charter value that has not been effectively extended to the African-Canadian community.

Through modernizing the court challenges program in the ways proposed above, the Government of Canada would be making an historic leap forward toward comprehensive recognition and correction of the centuries of systemic anti-black racism that has imperiled the prospects and well-being of far too many African-Canadians in our country.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much for that very clear presentation.

Mr. Mia.

[Ziyaad Mia, Member, Legal Advocacy Committee, Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm glad to see there's no snow here, but it is a little chillier than Toronto. It's good to be here.

Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the committee and fellow witnesses. My name is Ziyaad Mia and I'm a member of the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association. I'm with the legal advocacy committee. I used to run that committee for a number of years and I was also on the board of this organization in the past.

The Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association is pleased to have this opportunity to contribute to the study of access to justice, and in particular, the restoration of the court challenges program.

Our organization is a national organization of more than 300 lawyers now. It started in the late 1990s with a few lawyers in Toronto that began, as any lawyers' group does, as a social networking group trying to find opportunities for business. That grew as 2001 hit with national security legislation coming forward. We got very active on human rights, national security, and civil rights.

For the last 16 years we have been very active in the discourse on human rights, national security, and civil liberties. We've appeared and I myself have appeared many times at parliamentary committees on various issues, most recently last year on Bill C-51.

I believe you have our brief written submission, but I'll take a few moments today to talk about what's in that submission and some of the rationale behind what we're recommending and why we think restoration of the CCP is important for the country and also for ensuring access to justice.

As a starting point for our organization, our fundamental touchstones are the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the values that it holds. They are the ground for our organization, its values, and the work that we do.

The other piece is the rule of law in Canada. As we know, we see chaos in many parts of the world. I think it goes to those very issues, that there's a lack of rule of law and fundamental values where government can be held accountable. For the CMLA that's very important because it really undergirds the liberal democracy that we have here that functions well, that we can sit here and respectfully debate and hold government to account and improve our legislation.

The third piece for the CMLA is really the dignity of all persons in Canada, and to promote those values in human rights, in national security, and in other ways. Certainly, we will speak when Muslim Canadians and Muslims in Canada are adversely affected by national security law and in terms of discriminatory impact where they practice their faith, those sorts of things. But that is not exclusively our focus. We see that as a subset of the dignity of all persons.

As many of you in the room are lawyers and parliamentarians, you know that the adoption of the charter was a landmark in our nation's history and further ensured that the rule of law and fundamental rights became a part of our legal culture and political tradition.

The core of the charter stands for two things. Number one, it is an entrenching of fundamental values and a public expression of those values and rights to the citizens, to the politicians, to the courts, to the institutions, to everyone in society that these values are important.

The second important piece of a charter or a bill of rights type of mechanism in all societies that have that, and where it functions well, is that it is a check on government. That is what the charter is designed to be, and when government acts it needs to be respectful of those fundamental rights and values. It's subject to scrutiny and justification. That's essentially what the charter does and how it operates. It holds government to account. For citizens, that is an important piece, because without that and the courts...you know, no disrespect, but even well-meaning governments can make mistakes. We do need courts and the rule of law to hold governments to account.

Is the CCP relevant, and is the charter relevant? That would be the bigger question. I think the charter is more relevant today than it was in 1982, for the precise fact that it is a check on government. Because the modern state has grown significantly in those 30-some odd years, I think it is more relevant today than it was when it was introduced.

That's where I come to the charter litigation as an access to justice item. Charter litigation is a key piece of access to justice. You've heard it from other witnesses today and in previous hearings you've held. It's a key piece in holding government to account. Certainly, there is the media and there are other pieces in civil society that hold government to account, but in terms of access to justice and the legal system in our division of powers, this is an important piece.

This is where our concern is. Without the CCP, vulnerable and disadvantaged persons and communities in Canada may not have the resources or the capacity to hold governments to account. Where their rights are infringed or threatened by government action, they may not be able to access the courts, because as we know—many of us are lawyers—it's a costly business to go to court, and it's an increasingly costly business to go to court.

At the end of the day, those disadvantaged people in Canada may then become invisible to the justice system itself, and the court's doors essentially will be closed to them. What's the effect of having that happen to those people? Over time, that lack of access to justice will really distort the contours of charter jurisprudence.

What you're going to have is a society where some people just can't exercise their rights and where those who are well-heeled and can afford to exercise their rights will go to court. You're going to get this lopsided jurisprudence. You're won't be getting a reflection of the real concerns that are out there in society.

That's why we think the CCP is crucially important. It's not the only piece in access to justice—don't get me wrong—but it is an important piece in making that happen. We think it's important to not have a lopsided jurisprudence with respect to the charter, and that's essentially why we support the restoration of the program.

In terms of restoration, we would like to see the restoration of the essential elements of the old program—we don't get into details, but I'd be happy to answer your questions—such as equality rights, for sure, and language minority rights, on which there has been some discussion about whether they're parsed off. We're not wedded to a particular model, but certainly we're interested in having those things preserved, as well as independence from government, for sure.

Also, the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association is asking for the mandate and scope to be expanded to include section 7 of the charter, not to be a subsidiary right to section 15. I'm being clear. With all due respect to my colleagues from the CBA, I appreciate that perspective and I agree with where she's going with that, but I would like to see section 7 stand alone.

I don't want a disadvantaged community or individual turned away for a section 7 claim where they don't have a neat fit into an enumerated or analogous ground, because that would actually just be a bureaucratic way or an unforeseen circumstance. If our goal is to have disadvantaged people have access to justice and their charter rights, we don't want to tell them to go away because they don't fit into one of those neat boxes.

Let's take the Carter case, for example. We could say that's a disadvantaged class of persons who suffer and who may need to access that right to die, but those people cross every faith community, different economic boundaries, sex, and religion—I mentioned that—so it could cross a lot of the enumerated grounds, and they may technically be knocked out of a charter challenge program.

The other piece, the section 7 substantive “right to life, liberty and security of the person”, holds a lot of promise for litigation. In particular, a lot of people have talked about socio-economic rights. I don't know whether it's in there or not. Courts will decide, but this is the point of having test case litigation, and this is the reason why we need to have charter support for those cases.

We'd like it extended to provincial law and action as well, for the very fact that it is not about jurisdictional battles or politics. This is about the charter, and the charter applies to all government action. It is a check on government. That's the lens we should look at in terms of application.

We would like the program to be independent of government and funding to be sustainable and stable.

Those are my submissions. I look forward to your questions. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much, Mr. Mia.

Madam Levesque and Monsieur Rae.

[Anne Levesque, Chairperson, Human Rights Committee, Council of Canadians with Disabilities]

In fact, my colleague Mr. John Rae is going to speak first.

[John Rae, Second Vice-Chairperson and Chairperson of Social Policy Committee, Council of Canadians with Disabilities]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, my name is John Rae. I'm second vice-chair of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities. I appear with Anne Levesque, who is chair of our human rights committee.

We appreciate being invited to be here today. Being included in these proceedings is important for our work, and the court challenges program has been very important to the litigation side of our work. That's only part of what we do, however. We are a national organization, a consumer organization, and the primary voice of persons with disabilities at the national level.

You've heard the adage “nothing about us without us”. That's where we come in. We are that voice. We are involved in lobbying for legislation, in trying to improve public attitudes, and in trying to shape government policy. One of the things we do best is bring our community together to help government in its policy development role. Occasionally we get involved in litigation, particularly as intervenors, and we have participated in cases that have gone as far as the Supreme Court.

When we think about the historic division of powers in this country.... It is the same in every human rights commission, every year. The largest percentage of cases that are received fall in the prohibited ground of disability, and generally in the area of employment.

That is why we also support the expansion of the court challenges program to cover government actions at the provincial level. The extent of discrimination, exclusion, and oppression that is the reality of our community continues to be widespread, and we need the opportunity for more systemic responses to this kind of widespread exclusion and discrimination.

Similarly, at a human rights level, we often deal with one person's issue, one case at a time. That's too slow. The charter and human rights legislation, in our view, promised us something different. We've come further up the road in terms of being equal before it under the law, but we're a long way from realizing the charter's promise of equal benefit of Canadian law. This is why the court challenges program is important.

It's one thing to have good law in this country, and I think we have pretty good law. As citizens and organizations, if we do not have the resources to be able to test and try to expand what that law covers, then it's just not achieving what we need. This is where the court challenges program is important, has assisted us, and we look forward to its return.

[Anne Levesque]

Thank you so much.

My name is Anne Levesque. I am the chairperson of the Human Rights Committee of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities. The committee is mainly made up of persons with disabilities. Our committee guides the council's legal intervention strategy.

As my colleague Mr. Rae pointed out, our strategy in this regard is often not to undertake legal proceedings. That is why the council is in favour of restoring the fund created under the Court Challenges Program to support negotiations with government. That being said, we are opposed to binding arbitration.

Today, on behalf of the council, I will address two aspects. First, the funding of human rights litigation. Secondly, the increase in the funding envelope for community consultation created under the previous program.

Let's begin with human rights. The human rights legislation and system in Canada is sometimes the best forum to advocate for the equality of persons with disabilities. The objective of human rights legislation throughout Canada is to eliminate discrimination. By filing human rights complaints, persons with disabilities support and enhance the parliamentary intent and objective to eliminate discrimination. In our opinion, that is a valid objective that should be funded by the government.

In this regard, let me give you the example of a case the council participated in. This case is unfortunately not mentioned in our brief, but it is quite well known. It is the Hughes, James Peter v. Elections Canada case, a case argued before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in 2010. This case dealt with polling stations that are not accessible.

As you can see, this was not theoretical. In this case, the person's right to vote, the most fundamental democratic right, was jeopardized for discriminatory reasons. Mr. Hughes filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Right Tribunal. The council was granted interested party status, which is equivalent to intervenor status before the court.

The tribunal granted a range of very interesting, varied and multidisciplinary remedies. These remedies were obtained in consultation with the council. This shows that it is not necessarily just a matter of proceedings between adversarial parties, but that sometimes the council and the complainants work together to bring about better policies.

In this case it was determined that Elections Canada had to consult the council and the population of persons with disabilities so as to make the Canadian electoral system more accessible. In addition, this decision was in keeping with Canada's international obligations to persons with disabilities, which are to ensure that Canada promotes participation, equality rights, dignity and independence. This type of very innovative and progressive remedy might not have been possible in the context of a court case invoking section 15.

Currently, it must be said that the human rights system in Canada is not accessible. In Canada (CHRC) v. Canada (A. G.) the council intervened before the Supreme Court to argue the fact that human rights complainants who win their case should be entitled to compensation for their legal costs. The Supreme Court did not accept that argument. So, a complainant who wins his case and obtains systemic improvements that affect all persons with disabilities will not be compensated for court costs. Often, there is no financial advantage to pursuing a case. In the Canadian human rights system, damages are capped at $20,000. In the case of Ms. Mowat, legal costs amounted to $100,000.

To summarize the issue, the battlefield is neither equitable nor equal. You have certainly heard about professor Blackstock's case dealing with aboriginal children.

The system is not equitable. The Council of Canadians with Disabilities believe that the reinstatement and modernization of the Court Challenges Program should be accompanied by a new strategy regarding court cases at the Department of Justice. When that department deals with groups who advocate for equality, groups that have been historically disadvantaged in court, it should perhaps attempt to create a more level playing field.

I would now like to discuss the consultation funding envelope and the involvement of groups that promote equality.

The old program granted funds for consultations. In our brief we ask that this fund be extended so that consultations may be carried out throughout a court case. A sum of $5,000 is not sufficient to conduct accessible and bilingual consultations with persons with disabilities throughout Canada. Here again, the purpose is to see to it that Canada complies with its international obligations stating that court proceedings should take place in a manner that promotes the participation and independence of persons with disabilities.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much for your presentation.

I also want to thank all of the witnesses.

We will now have our question and answer period.

Mr. Falk, please go ahead.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Very good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to our witnesses for attending committee here this morning.

Mr. Mia, I'd like to begin my questions with you. You made some references to charter relevancy. I know, having read your written submission, that you're also an advocate of expanding the current mandate of the program to include section 7, as some of our previous witnesses are as well. That isn't lost on this committee.

You talked about there often not being resources available to pursue access to justice. Can you expand a little on a funding model? You didn't talk at all about what kind of funding model you would envision with this new program that is being proposed. Have you given it any thought? If so, can you elaborate on it?

[Ziyaad Mia]

Thanks, Mr. Falk.

We haven't given it much thought in depth. In the previous model, the litigation piece, it was case development, the litigation funding, and some negotiation dollars. I think for the pure litigation side that's important. I think the old program also had money for outreach and some impact studies. I think those pieces are important as well. In our view, the heart of it is the litigation funding, but that's not all. It isn't just the dollars for litigation. That's important for sure and we would like to see it. But part of it is also education and outreach.

Our society is arguably one of the richest societies in the history of humanity. But when you're disadvantaged, you don't have a lot of time to access Parliamentary committees, to go and seek out lawyers to take your case. You just tough it out in life, so part of it is the outreach, getting the message out to people who may have their rights infringed upon. We need to tell them they have a resource they could use to explore their rights, or to enforce their rights, against government action that's disadvantaging them. That's important.

The program also did a lot of work on capacity-building and researching the impact of decisions. It looked at future challenges and explored issues. At its heart, the CCP is a test case program. This is the reason we would like to see section 7 in there—it is rife with test case activity. It may fail. It may not. We don't know. That is for litigants to bring forward and for courts to decide. But to explore the contours of the charter, to fulfill the rights of disadvantaged and vulnerable people in this country, I think it's important to do all those.

I looked at some of the dollars in the old program. I've worked in the public sector a lot. I've worked in private sector. It's not a lot of dollars to fund the litigation, the amounts that the program did cover. It wasn't that they were writing a blank cheque to someone. It wasn't just an invitation to sue the government. It was really an encouragement model. It showed that there was other funding available and that this would top you up and get you capacity support and advice on strategy.

I believe it was Mr. Chipeur in the previous panel who said there was bias in selection. We're all humans. I guess there's always some bias. The issue is that there does need to be some vetting. The old program had about $2 million to $3 million annually. If I'm running that program, I'm not just going to hand over $50,000 or $60,000 to each one that comes in the door on a first-in basis. I want to fund the ones that have a chance of success in pushing the law forward, so this is important.

Without giving you dollar amounts, I'd say the funding needs to be increased, especially given that times change and litigation is costly. I'd say increase that funding, and make it stable and sustainable. I know my colleague and friend Mr. Bhabha was here recently. He talked about whether there was a constitutional right to charter challenges. That's an interesting point. If you think about it, disadvantaged people in this country can't access their rights. By virtue of being disadvantaged, the discrimination in the access process is itself a charter violation. He raises an important point. It's something you should think about in securing funding that is stable and bulletproof, as bulletproof as you can get it. It should be independent of government for sure.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you for that answer. It partially answers my question.

Should applicants have to demonstrate that they actually require funding? In the past, there have been some very well-heeled organizations that have applied for and received funding. At the same time, some folks that are legitimately in need of funds to pursue access to justice haven't qualified. Should there be a demonstrated need for funding? Should there be some kind of cost-sharing built into the program? Have you thought about that at all?

[Ziyaad Mia]

The previous program was sort of cost-sharing, because the litigant had to put substantial money forward. I think it was only tens of thousands. When you're looking at charter litigation, it's not a lot. The bulk of the money was still funded by the litigant or the organization. I agree with you that we want to fund those who can't. That's the whole logic of it. If you can't get there, we want to assist you in making your case if you have a good one. If you can get there, then arguably you shouldn't be accessing this program.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

That's good. That's all I wanted to hear. Thank you.

I think I'm out of time, right?