Ms. Barron, what I would say to you—first of all, welcome to the committee—is that this is a distinct priority of mine in particular.
I am a product of the legal aid system insofar as I have worked at three legal aid clinics in my career and founded another in Toronto. You will not find a more fervent or ardent advocate for the legal aid system in this country, and I'm very happy to assume the role that I have had since July 26. That's the first point.
The second point is that access to justice requires a very discerning approach. We must take it seriously, both in terms of prioritization as a concept and also as prioritization for federal dollars. That is what we have been doing with criminal legal aid for many years, and that is what we have been doing with immigration and refugee legal aid since 2019, when the provinces around the country resiled from that commitment.
Third, what I would say to you is that access to justice, particularly vis-à-vis the indigenous communities and the Black community, dovetails with what we are doing in launching an indigenous justice strategy and a Black justice strategy, both of which are under way. The latter will be rolled out in 2024 and the former a bit later than early next year.
Fourth, what I would say to you is that I think there's also an important access-to-justice component that's even woven in with this nomination. What I mean is that some have taken issue with the requirement for functional bilingualism. Where access to justice plays a role is that if you are a litigant whose mother tongue is French, and both you and your counsel want to make the written and oral arguments in French, there's an access-to-justice component to ensuring that those arguments are read, heard and understood in that same language without the usage of an interpreter, because language means a lot, particularly in legal pleadings. Even by virtue of a nomination as exceptional as Madame Moreau's, what we have is an improvement on access to justice on that front as well.