As Ms. Tremblay pointed out, there is a difference between legal aid and the Court Challenges Program, and that has to do with the importance of the rights Canadians have under the charter.
I think that by definition, a right defined in the charter is not just an individual right of the person who brings the case forward. There is also a national and collective implication when a right is redefined, when the scope of a right is defined by the Supreme Court and when this court defines the meaning of the charter. This is not necessarily so for a civil case or for a request for protection that an individual takes to court. That is an important distinction.
Let us look at some of the cases that went to the Supreme Court as a result of the Court Challenges Program. I am thinking of cases such as Arsenault-Cameron and Mahé. These are very specific examples where the right of citizens to education and the right of communities to control their schools were established by the court. There are French-language school boards throughout the country as a result of a Supreme Court decision, and this decision was handed down because of the Court Challenges Program.