I can speak from the language panel, and obviously the equality panel has the same procedure.
The Court Challenges Program is accountable to its community. It is community based. It is not an institution. They come from the minority groups. They present their cases. They come to us for funding, and primarily it was a funding program to assist litigants. We had the contribution accord, which was signed with Canadian Heritage, and that contribution accord set a lot of the rules that were to be applicable. For example, the language rights panel, or the equality rights panel, would look to see if it was a constitutional case, if it raised issues that appeared to be of importance to the communities—the linguistic communities in our case—and if it was a question of national interest or potentially a question of national interest. We had to look to see whether the applicant was in fact a non-profit and did require funding, because we do not fund cases for those who can afford them.
Those are the issues we looked at. We weighed, and we balanced. We studied the cases. We studied what had already gone on. We were accountable in the respect that we had to make the best possible use of the money we had, and we had to sometimes select the best cases. Sometimes it was a simple process. Other times we had to send people back and ask them to obtain more documents, or to do a consultation with the community, as Justice Bastarache was just saying. How do you know whether the ayants droit are sufficient to make a case to go forward? It was often an elaboration of action or a consultation with the community before we could look at the case.
These were all issues we looked at. In the same way that we were accountable, and the program was accountable, the Government of Canada is accountable to its citizens by virtue of the charter and the Constitution. We want your accountability, too.
Thank you.