Thank you very much.
I really would like to thank the committee for this opportunity to provide some input. I must admit, however, I haven't had too much time to prepare because it was rather sudden. In any event, I wish to give you my thoughts on this, as scattered as they may be. But I think this is so important that you're discussing this, and notwithstanding the fact that I would have liked a bit more preparation time, I still wanted very much to do this.
In terms of my overview of the court challenges program, I see it as having enormous benefit to Canada. In its essence, it's an affirmative action program, you might say, for the disadvantaged in our country. But I think the spinoff benefits are quite profound and I think the committee should think about those benefits as well as the benefits to disadvantaged groups.
First of all, one benefit to Canada is that the court challenges program provided a vehicle whereby our most important laws, our charter, would be interpreted by the court. And as the court challenges program allowed other people to come forward with their views about how laws impact on them, the chances of having the supreme law of our country interpret it in the best possible way, I think, was enormously enhanced because very broad-ranging views about the impacts of laws on people were heard, and the context of the application of the law was able to be much better understood. So that's one benefit.
Another benefit of court challenges, in my view, was the engagement of society that it promoted. I'm a legal academic and I do some practice in the courts. But what I've discovered...and I was very much engaged, as a member of the legal committee of LEAF but also as counsel in a couple of the important cases, in particular the Keegstra case and the Butler case, the “speech” cases. In my experience in doing these cases, I worked with a Calgary law firm and the whole firm got behind this effort in a very good way. People would literally stay all night to help assemble the factums, to help give advice on the arguments, and so on. I think it engaged the legal profession. It also engaged the media to a large extent, academics, and the public generally.
I remember when a lot of those first decisions were coming out of the Supreme Court of Canada on equality. They were front page stories in The Globe and Mail and other newspapers, and they engaged the public in what it means to be a Canadian, what does equality mean in our country, what does discrimination mean, how are people being treated and why are they taking these cases. I mean, it generated that kind of national debate, and I think that's a very good thing. I think for many people it was the first time they started to become engaged with their own sense of Canadian identity. So education was also a benefit that overlapped with the engagement of society.
When you think about cases like the Jane Doe case, for example, where the police used a woman as bait in order to solve a rape case, that engaged the public on the difference between good policing, equal policing, policing that respected the dignity of women, and policing that didn't. You can come to the same result--apprehending criminals--but the Jane Doe case underscored how very important it is to keep equality principles in mind in police enforcement.
Similarly, there's education on hate speech. In the Keegstra case, we had a schoolteacher preaching hatred from the front of the classroom. I think that case demonstrated to Canadians that there are huge responsibilities on teachers. There's also huge power there.
The Keegstra case was not only a prosecution of one man by the government, but when equality groups weighed in and when LEAF weighed in on that and started talking about the effects of speech on people, I think it raised awareness in the Canadian public of these very important matters. Those are just a couple of cases, but there were many that would also have that impact.
A fourth benefit is access to justice, of course. We have legal aid in this country, but it's very limited in its application. It's only for people who've committed serious criminal offences, and it doesn't touch any of the jurisprudence that's required to define disadvantage and equality, and what our country means when it says that it's a country that respects human rights. The court challenges filled, to quite a large extent, that void and gave access to justice to many other people who never, ever otherwise would have appear before the courts.
Fifth, I'm just about out of time, but I'll quickly say that I think another enormous benefit—and I've certainly experienced this myself in my travels internationally—is that it has enhanced Canada's reputation beyond measure in terms of our relationships with other countries, because it's such a democratic concept to enable those in society who are the most disadvantaged to challenge government.
You've no doubt heard the expression “speaking truth to power”. Court challenges allowed that to happen. Countries around the world recognized that as being hugely creative, courageous, and really putting in action and putting in substance all the lovely rhetoric around human rights that states like to present as being their positions. Canada actually did something about it, and with huge results.
I have much more to say, but my time is up. I'd be very happy to try to answer some of your questions.