Certainly the advance cost is a positive development and is relevant in equality cases as well as aboriginal cases.
What we would say on any policy question like that, such as whether advance costs should be required or that a request for costs should be made, is that careful consideration should be given to any policy to ensure that it's not undermining the basic rationale. Does it create, for example, additional barriers for litigants to make such a request before they can obtain funding from the program? Certainly it's a question to consider, and there will be other policy questions like that.
We urge this committee to think carefully about how this would play out in practice, whether it would create a barrier that would interfere with the underlying rationale of the program.