Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Firstly, I wish to thank witnesses for their testimony.
Starting off with the Canadian Bar Association, I couldn't be more in agreement with your presentation, so much so that I'm not going to ask you any questions about it. I will pass on to CBA New Brunswick president Maître René Basque your fine job here. Thank you for the expressions such as “generations of rights” and “rights cannot be compartmentalized”.
What we're going to face here, if you want to take it back to the CBA, are some red herring arguments that really began at your conference in St. John's, Newfoundland, last summer, when Mr. Toews, then justice minister, made the argument that governments should not fund cases they don't know anything about as adversaries.
What we've learned in our little research here, through this committee, is that the vast majority of cases are not against the federal government; they're against municipal governments—I have some experience in that regard—provincial governments, and other boards, associations. So that's a red herring. You'll hear, probably today as well, that we should be concerned with other minorities, other minority language needs, and that's a fair comment. But this is the official languages issue, and this is what we're here to discuss.
Thank you for your comments. I have two questions for Mr. Doucet and for Mrs. Aucoin.
It is important to understand that entrenching linguistic rights in section 24 of the Charter does not spell the end of case law in this area. On the other hand, it has been said that the issue of language rights has been resolved. Is this the case?
Secondly, one argument used against the Court Challenges Program is that people living in Dieppe, New Brunswick, for instance, which now happens to be the wealthiest community in the province, have the means to defend their rights. They are able to pay lawyers to defend their rights. Do you agree with this argument, Mr. Doucet?
Mrs. Aucoin, how does abolishing the Court Challenges Program affect Acadian society?