I'm glad that you asked that question, because a lot of people would think that after 34 years the law must be settled. Why do we still need cases to be funded?
You may notice that in all provinces except Newfoundland there have been cases with regard to the educational rights of the language minority. This means that no province has readily accepted to implement section 23 of the charter. Some of the cases are still before the courts. There is one in the Northwest Territories, one in the Yukon, and one in British Columbia. There is one about to start in Saskatchewan. In New Brunswick, the only official bilingual province in this country, there were four language cases against the government last year, and there are still two going on. Why would you say it's not needed any more?
I'm saying that it's needed for the implementation of the rights. It's not so much because we haven't determined the scope of the rights. This is why test cases are not really what we need, although there are still a number of issues that have to be clarified. One of the most important issues is now being raised in the Northwest Territories case. In a few words, in the Northwest Territories there was a lawsuit by the francophone community to get funds to enlarge the school, because it was too small. The government decided that there was a way of restricting admissions so that they wouldn't have to enlarge the school. This they did by passing a regulation under which only persons who are qualified under section 23 are admissible. It means if you move here from France and have unilingual French children, they're not allowed in the French school, because they're not Canadian citizens. To add to that, they decided that preschool, which is in the same building, had to be in English, because it's not covered by section 23. This means that you're going to cut in half the number of children going into the first grade.
I haven't changed my mind. What has changed is the context. But there is still a tremendous need. I think the Court Challenges Program has been well run. It has been effective and is still needed.