Thank you very much, Chair.
I want to echo the gratitude we all have to you, Ms. Tansey and Mr. Verrillo, for your service to Canada. We are fortunate to have such eminent jurists with us this morning.
In very little time, I want to talk about money and an autonomous administration, which I think Mr. Maldoff and Justice Bastarache touched on. I understand, if my figures are correct, the annual budget of the CCP was about $2.9 million before, and it's now going up to $5 million a year. I believe I'm understanding Justice Bastarache properly that the idea might be to create a foundation. I've heard from other witnesses that there ought to be three streams. There ought to be an indigenous stream, a minority language stream, and a section 15 stream. I've heard about different university models.
I'll be totally candid with you, I'm worried about the administration costs eating the budget. Something that was done under the former Conservative government I commend to you for your consideration, namely with respect to the special advocates program within the Department of Justice, which deals with national security immigration matters. I'm familiar with the program, and there was a very effective way of shielding those people and retaining the autonomy that everyone agrees, I'm sure, is required without having any administrative costs.
Especially when I hear from you, Justice Bastarache, about $150,000 versus the unlimited resources of government and all the cases that are still to be resolved under all three of those streams, I'm thinking we should figure out a way to retain autonomy, but avoid the administrative cost that I fear could gobble up the budget of $5 million pretty quickly.
I would like your respective comments.