Could you please tell us what you think about the Court Challenges Program? Mr. Chong often says that the program had more to do with legal aid. However, there is a difference between legal aid and the Court Challenges Program. That is a well-known fact. Mr. Baird, the minister at the time, said that the government would not give Canadians money to fight the government and its legislation.
Does that not mean that the government's position is that there are laws, but that it will not give communities... The danger is that ordinary citizens would never be able to afford taking a case to the Supreme Court. But, when the Court Challenges Program was in place, Ms. Paulin from Tracadie-Sheila, to mention just one example, was able to win a case involving the RCMP in New Brunswick. The federal government may say that in the end it was the province that provided the settlement, but it was thanks to the Court Challenges Program that the case was made public. The danger with cancelling the Court Challenges Program is that official language minority communities have lost one of the tools they had for defending their rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.