Thank you very much.
Madam Chair, this is probably one of the single most important and historic programs that has ever occurred in Canada. Practically every single piece of case law that pertains to gender has actually come out of this program. It has usually tended to defend the rights of those who are vulnerable and disadvantaged and who have absolutely no money to be able to defend themselves.
It's a minority rights program that has defended aboriginal women, immigrant women, lesbian women, and women who have actually been at the margins of our society and who have suffered from poverty and discrimination. These women have no voice. They have no money, generally speaking, to hire a lawyer to take discriminatory cases to court.
The court challenges program was put in by a Liberal government to support the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and gender equality therein. Therefore, to cancel the only tool by which minority women and women in terms of gender equality can have access to the courts and can have access to human rights is in fact nullifying what the charter intends to do.
To do this is destructive, to say the least. It's discriminatory, and I think it must be returned if women are to have rights acknowledged in this country and access to justice. Without access to justice, these women have been denied justice.