Status of Women Committee on Dec. 4th, 2007

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

I call the meeting to order.

I want to welcome everyone here and thank in advance all of our witnesses for being here today on short notice. We're quite anxious to hear from you.

Everyone has five minutes, so I think we will proceed as the list indicates and begin with Ms. Shelagh Day from the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action.

[Shelagh Day, Chair, Human Rights Committee, Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action]

Thank you very much. I'm very pleased to be here today.

I want to start by saying that the court challenges program is one of Canada's most important access-to-justice programs. The equality rights side of the program was added in 1985 when section 15 came into force and John Crosbie was the Minister of Justice.

It's essential to the rule of law in Canada that the law be accessible to everyone. The rule of law means a number of things. It means that the law should apply and be accessible to rich and poor people alike. I think our Constitution says that our country is founded on that principle, and that's a very basic principle of equality. It cannot be given reality in circumstances in which people who do not have means do not have rights.

By de-funding the court challenges program, we have essentially made equality rights in Canada exist only for the rich. People who are disdvantaged in this country, women among them, now do not have access to the constitutional rights we fought so hard to get in 1982 and were so proud of when they were put into the Constitution.

I remember that time well. After the struggles of women to be involved in getting new language into the Constitution, we then went forward to John Crosbie and said that now we that have the language, we have to have access to the use of it. That was the moment at which an existing program turned into the court challenges program, with equality rights funding as well as funding for challenges from linguistic minorities.

Canada says, when it goes to the United Nations to talk to the United Nations about its compliance with international human rights treaties, that the court challenges program is part of the machinery through which Canada fulfills its commitments internationally.

The court challenges program has been recognized repeatedly by international treaty bodies as a mainstay, a central component of Canada's human rights machinery, and a way in which we comply with those international human rights commitments.

It's been recognized by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1998 and 2006, by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in 2003, and by the Human Rights Committee in 2005. In all those circumstances, what the committees were saying to Canada about the court challenges program was that this was a wonderful program that should have been extended to apply to not only federal laws and policies but also to provincial laws and policies, so that people anywhere in the country dealing with any law or policy at any level should be able to access their rights.

I point out to you that in 2007 the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination reviewed Canada after the court challenges program had been de-funded. That committee said to Canada, “The Committee recommends that the State party”--that's Canada--“take the necessary measures to ensure access to justice for all persons within its jurisdiction without discrimination. In this connection, the Committee urges the State party to reinstate the Court Challenges Program...as a matter of priority.” In other words, in the latest review by United Nations treaty bodies, Canada has been found wanting for having de-funded the court challenges program.

The court challenges program has funded extraordinarily important cases and interventions for women over the last two decades. I will just mention these and hope we will be able to go into them in more detail. Among these are Canadian Newspapers; the Butler case, which had to do with obscenity laws; Mills, which had to do with rape shield laws and whether the accused in rape cases could get access to women's counselling records; O'Connor, which was the case against Bishop O'Connor, which did the same thing; Gosselin, which had to do with welfare law in Quebec; Lesiuk, which had to do with employment insurance law; and now the most important one, McIvor v. Canada.

We're very fortunate today to have Sharon McIvor with us to actually make comments and explain that case to us. A lot of people think the McIvor case is one of the most important sex equality cases of the last two decades. It has been funded by the court challenges program up until now; now there is no more funding for it to continue.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you very much.

Next, we're hearing from Carmela Hutchison.

[Carmela Hutchison, President, DisAbled Women's Network of Canada]

Thank you.

We wish to thank the Government of Canada for seeking our input on the future of this important initiative for Canadians and for disabled women. We wish to also thank the Algonquin people for sharing their traditional lands with us, and we thank the Creator for this opportunity to speak with you, in the hope that the Canadian government will restore the court challenges program, and even enhance it, to demonstrate both to its citizens and the world Canada's commitment of access to equality and human rights.

DAWN Canada is a national organization whose mission is to end the poverty, isolation, discrimination, and violence experienced by women with disabilities. DAWN began in 1985, and its incorporation was granted in 1992.

Because I know we only have five minutes, I'm going to go straight to the impacts of the closure and to the recommendations, and then I'll come back for whatever time is left.

The equality interests of women with disabilities continue to be underrepresented—or in many cases non-existent—in the development of government policy and program delivery. Likewise, there are very few equality test cases that deal with the many levels of discrimination experienced by women with disabilities. Therefore, DAWN Canada and its affiliates must continue to use every opportunity to continue to seek equality rights for women with disabilities.

The court challenges program provides funding for equality-seeking groups to meet and explore what issues might be tested in the courts; to develop tools to help people understand their charter rights; and to take cases to court on the grounds that a particular law or policy practice discriminates against women with disabilities. Potential impacts of the closure are that Canada would not be in compliance with its federal government obligation, under section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to promote and protect the equality rights of disadvantaged persons in Canada. DAWN is puzzled as to why the Canadian government would want to weaken access to rights protection when it observes that our government frequently calls on other nations to enhance human rights protections for their citizens.

Though the court challenges program has been pointed to in part as a means of compliance with international human rights committees, there is no indication of how we might continue such compliance in the absence of the court challenges program. Will this measure send a message to our international partners that we in Canada no longer care and, worse, also send a message at home and abroad that continued discrimination might be acceptable?

The costs of legal challenges are impossible for the average citizen, let alone disabled women. Disabled women, as an additionally disadvantaged group, should have additional help and protections for their charter rights and their ability to pursue them. Closure of the court challenges program will put any hope of this protection out of their reach. I refer you to DAWN Canada's presentation to you on May 3, 2007, on the economic security of women, for a detailed description of the poverty we live in.

There has been growing concern over the increase in the number of self-represented cases as people have had to resort to taking on their own legal work in order to pursue their rights. A further increase in this process may be a result of the closure of the court challenges program. Court challenges programs were successful in nine out of the twelve cases DAWN has participated in, suggesting that this program was meaningful and relevant for assisting disabled women to achieve justice in policies that had unintended negative consequences for their lives. A list of these, along with a summation of them, will be submitted with the written report that follows this oral submission. We respectfully recommend the reinstatement and enhancement of the court challenges program.

Government also needs to reclaim its legislative powers. Rights protection bodies, like the appeals tribunals and ombudsmen of government, need to have the ability and power to compel equality rights. Make legal aid widely available to impoverished people in pursuit of their rights, and provide funded programs for people to assist them with their applications for programs. The inability to perform this task, either by them or the professionals required to provide supportive documentation, is inadequate to uphold legitimate requests, and this then results in needless repetition and appeal processes.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you, Ms. Hutchison. You came in right on time. That's wonderful.

Now the National Association of Women and the Law, and we welcome Martha Jackman.

[Martha Jackman, Member, National Steering Committee, National Association of Women and the Law]

Thanks very much to the committee for the invitation.

The National Association of Women and the Law, NAWL, is a non-profit organization that has been working to improve the legal status of women in Canada through legal education, research, and law reform advocacy since 1974.

My name is Professor Martha Jackman. I am a professor of constitutional law at the University of Ottawa and a member of the national steering committee of NAWL.

As you know, the Status of Women Canada's women's program experienced some changes to its funding criteria whereby advocating for equality is no longer fundable, and as a result, the National Association of Women and the Law in September became effectively de-funded and had to lay off its paid staff and close its national office.

We have now become, once again, a volunteer organization, which is why I am here. Our ability to respond to requests such as this one obviously has been greatly compromised by these funding cuts.

In my view, it's necessary to understand why the court challenges program was cut in order to understand the significance of these cuts and the impact on women in particular.

Why was the CCP cut? In September 2006, then Treasury Board President John Baird explained, “I just don't think it made sense for the government to subsidize lawyers to challenge the government's own laws in court”. I'd like to take a couple of minutes to examine the underlying premise of this statement, which I take to reflect the government's position.

First is the idea that it doesn't make sense. It may not make sense from a Conservative ideological position to maintain the court challenges program, and it's hard to ignore the fact that close Conservative political advisers, including the Prime Minister's own chief of staff, Ian Brodie, wrote a book in 2002 entitled Friends of the Court: The Privileging of Interest Group Litigants in Canada. He was particularly critical of the influence of women's groups and feminist organizations in charter litigation funded by court challenges.

Conservative Party insider Tom Flanagan was interviewed by The House on September 22, 2007. He actually called the cuts both to court challenges and to Status of Women Canada “a nice step” in the government's plan to gradually cut off women's organizations' access to the Canadian government.

The cut to the court challenges program is hard to understand if one lacks a basic understanding of the role of constitutional rights within a parliamentary democracy; that is, the democracy-reinforcing role of rights, the fact that Canada's parliamentary democracy is infused by charter equality values like equality, and that constitutional rights provide an important accountability mechanism within our constitutional democratic system. Constitutional rights protect minorities from majorities.

It doesn't make sense if one fails to understand that the charter is not at odds with Canadian parliamentary democracy. Charter rights, including women's equality rights in particular, do not undermine Canadian parliamentary democracy. Rather, charter rights reinforce and protect not only the rights of individual women but constitutional democracy itself.

It doesn't make sense for the government to subsidize if you ignore the fact that the government subsidizes numerous litigation-related activities in Canada, some of them directly—for example, legal aid and representation before the numerous public inquiries that seem to always be going on in Canada—but more importantly, indirectly through tax spending.

I will give only two examples of the indirect funding to constitutional litigation that continues unabated after the repeal of the court challenges program. One is litigation of the type that the tobacco companies have engaged in over the past ten years to have Canada's anti-smoking laws struck down. This litigation is subsidized by Canadian taxpayers and the Government of Canada through the tax spending that occurs, as this is a deductible business expense.

I would also like to draw your attention to the activities of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which is attempting, as we speak, to strike down the single-tier medicare system in Canada, and it does this with the benefit of its charitable tax status--so again, an indirect Government of Canada subsidy to charter litigation, perhaps not of the type that we here would support.

It doesn't make sense for the government to subsidize lawyers if you ignore the fact that court-challenges-funded charter litigation is highly accountable. It's done pro bono or is heavily subsidized by these selfsame lawyers. And in many cases it's directly undertaken by women's and other equality-seeking organizations. This is not the stereotype of the greedy, selfish lawyer out for individual gain.

It doesn't make sense for the government to subsidize lawyers to challenge the government's own laws, according to Minister Baird. Now, we all know that the Government of Canada has, from time to time, enacted unconstitutional laws. And it's absurd to suggest, as Minister Baird has done, that the government itself can ensure against this. There needs to be an accountability mechanism for challenges to unconstitutional federal legislation: not only government action, but more importantly government inaction. Much of the charter litigation undertaken by women's groups is not to challenge unconstitutional laws, but to challenge inaction in areas of violence, racism, poverty, child care, and employment equity, among others.

There are no avenues for women to call governments to account for this unconstitutional inaction at the moment, and the lack of avenues for challenging unconstitutional state inaction has been further exacerbated by cuts not only to court challenges but also to Status of Women of Canada. I think Flanagan's interview on The House makes it clear that he, at least, understood this.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you, Professor Jackman. I hate to cut you off, but we are at the end of your time.

[Martha Jackman]

If you permit me to, I'll take 30 seconds just to conclude.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Okay.

[Martha Jackman]

What have women lost with the repeal of the court challenges program? Women have lost a key equality rights accountability mechanism that's fundamentally necessary within our parliamentary democracy. The need for the court challenges program may well have been unclear to Minister Baird. The advantages of cutting the program, in terms of its impact on women in particular, are clear from Mr. Brodie's book and Mr. Flanagan's comments. It's profoundly clear to NAWL and the other women's organizations here today, and for the sake of our constitutional democracy I hope it is equally clear to you, our elected members of the federal Parliament.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you, Professor Jackman.

We'll now hear from Gwendolyn Landolt, please.

[Gwendolyn Landolt, National Vice-President, REAL Women of Canada]

Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.

The court challenges program is an example of government corruption and taxpayer abuse. This conclusion is based on the fact that the program, although entirely funded by the taxpayer, was unaccountable to the public for its financial and other decisions because it is not subject to the Access to Information Act and did not report to Parliament. As a result, the directors of the program used it to promote an ideological, left-wing agenda to the detriment of all those holding a different perspective.

REAL Women of Canada, for example, was refused funding by the CCP on three separate occasions because our organization did not fit into the ideological views of the program.

The mandate of the program was to assist disadvantaged groups in cases that had legal merit and promoted equality rights. Unfortunately, none of these expressions were defined, and this enabled the CCP to interpret them in a subjective and undemocratic manner to promote a left-wing agenda. For example, applying their own unique interpretation of disadvantaged groups and individuals, they gave grants to many financially well-off and left-wing individuals and organizations.

I know the CPP has included women as a so-called disadvantaged group in Canada. There is serious disagreement, however, that all women are disadvantaged. Most of us are not. Most of us Canadian women are independent, capable, industrious, and perfectly capable of participating in the economic, social, and cultural life of the country by way of our own initiative. Some women are disadvantaged, but not women as a whole, and it was arrogant, totally arrogant, of the program in the past to fund only the narrow views of feminists, who do not reflect the views of Canadian women. They only reflect the views of the special interest group of feminists, and no one else.

In fact, the court challenges program, under the guise of promoting women's interests, has not promoted anything but the feminist ideology by the courts. LEAF, for example, which is the political arm of the feminist movement, has been granted over $2 million by the women's program at Secretary of State since its inception, and a further $1 million from the former Ontario Attorney General, Ian Scott. Yet LEAF received funding in 140 court cases, not to represent women but only to represent the feminist agenda.

Also, we know it has very heavily funded the homosexual same-sex marriage, and all sorts of their own legal litigation. For example, Capital Xtra, a homosexual newspaper, in their October 19, 2006 issue, said: “No group has benefited more from court challenges funding than the queer community.” In the same issue it said: “Money from the court challenges program helped Egale”, which is a homosexual group, “win equal marriage rights through the courts in B.C., Ontario, and Quebec.”

The CPP has a bias toward feminist, homosexual, left-wing organizations, and we have to ask why. Why? Because we have found in examining it that it is an organization that is organized by the few for the advantage of only a few. In fact, the court challenges program is not a group of anything, but a network of so-called independent groups operating under a different name but with most of its leaders and spokespersons being interchangeable.

For example, Shelagh Day, who spoke here today, was chairperson of the equality panel of the court challenges program. She is one of the founders of LEAF. She is a former national vice-president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. She represented and headed the lesbian caucus at the Beijing Conference. She does not represent women. She represents a feminist, lesbian agenda. That is her business, but not on the taxpayer's dollar. Miss Day is now on the steering committee of the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action.

We find that the executive director of NAWL, Andrée Côté, was chairman of the court challenges program. We find the DisAbled Women's Network, which consists of a group of interchangeable feminist member organizations, includes the National Association of Women and the Law. In fact, there is a small, select group that operated the court challenges program to their own benefit and to suit their own ideology.

The program funded by the Canadian taxpayer, which was established to support equality and non-discrimination—

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Could you wind up soon?

[Gwendolyn Landolt]

I'll just be a second, thanks.

The program has done nothing but support left-wing radical advocacy groups. It has done a great disservice to the democratic system and has served to ignominiously betray the Canadian taxpayer.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you very much, Ms. Landolt.

Now we are going to hear from LEAF and Ms. Doris Buss.

[Doris Buss, Chair, Law Program Committee, Women's Legal Education and Action Fund]

Thank you very much.

My name is Doris Buss. I'm a professor of law at Carleton University, and I'm the chair of the law program committee at LEAF.

As many of you will know, LEAF is an organization that brings litigation, education, and some law reform work to advance equality for all women. LEAF has been active since 1985. It has been involved in over 140 equality-rights-related decisions that have touched on the areas of sexual violence, pay inequity, social and economic rights, spousal and child support, reproductive freedom, and access to justice, just to name a few.

In LEAF's view, the court challenges program was a relatively inexpensive program, at just under $3 million a year, and yet it was highly effective. It breathed life into the inert language of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In Canada, as you all know, bringing court challenges is the principal means by which ordinary Canadians can challenge government action that infringes on their human rights. Dismantling the court challenges program has undermined the fragile system by which access to that simple remedy was made available to ordinary Canadians.

The high cost of charter litigation has the greatest and most deleterious impact on those Canadians with the least access to funds--namely, minority and aboriginal women. For Canadians at the lowest income levels, disproportionately represented by women, access to courts is an impossibility. The research available shows that where public funds supporting access to courts are cut, it is women, and minority women in particular, who are disproportionately impacted.

While the CCP was one of only several avenues by which the high costs of charter litigation could be somewhat ameliorated, the de-funding of CCP in particular is having a serious consequence for ordinary Canadians looking for remedies when their rights are violated.

The de-funding of CCP has a very human face. Organizations such as LEAF find themselves unable to take on meritorious cases of individuals whose rights are being infringed by the actions of the Government of Canada but who, often because of a history of discrimination, do not have the funds necessary to challenge those actions.

The case of Sharon Mclvor, who we're very fortunate to have with us today, is an example of just this sort of problem. As Ms. Mclvor will explain in more detail, her case challenges the definition of “Indian” under The Indian Act, and it was initially funded by the court challenges program. The British Columbia Supreme Court has upheld her claim. It has found that her rights and her son's rights were violated. The Government of Canada is appealing that case, and now Ms. McIvor and her son have to come up with the funds, absent the CCP, in order to face the appeal by the Government of Canada.

The implications are dire for human rights in Canada if applicants like Ms. Mclvor, whose rights have clearly been violated, are blocked from realizing those rights by a lack of funds. In effect, we would be left with a situation in which human rights abuses would be allowed to continue and fester perversely in those situations where they impact on society's poor and marginal members.

The court challenges program was not the be-all and end-all. It did not provide entire funding for cases, but it was substantially and symbolically important as an avenue for individuals to access their rights. It was thus part of a constellation of instruments by which the Government of Canada ensured a minimum level of access to justice for all Canadians, not just the privileged few.

The equality rights of women, and hence of all Canadians, were significantly enhanced by the CCP. Because of funding received through CCP, organizations like LEAF were able to bring cases for Canadians on a range of issues. We were able to work to uphold the rights of pregnant women. We were able to work to ensure that trials for rape would be fair and would not rely on harmful stereotypes about women's sexuality, that women would be treated fairly in divorce proceedings and settlements, that defendants in rape cases would not be allowed to troll through the private documents of victims, and so on. These are ordinary Canadians; they are not special interest groups. We don't know what their political leanings are. These are women who have been subject to sexual violence, and they deserve to have their rights upheld.

The CCP was one means by which, however partially, the democratic deficit in Canada could be addressed. It is not counterintuitive for a government to fund the means by which the most marginal members of society may seek to challenge the sometimes hidden barriers to their full inclusion. Indeed, it's essential in a parliamentary democracy like ours, where full democratic accountability is realized through the separation of the different arms of governance. We are facing a time when the Government of Canada is realizing a budget surplus of just under $14 billion and the government has cut $2.85 million from this one avenue that would allow ordinary Canadians to access their rights.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you very much, Professor Buss.

Now we're privileged to welcome Sharon McIvor and Elizabeth Atcheson. You have five minutes.

[Elizabeth Atcheson, Lawyer, As an Individual]

Thank you. My name is Elizabeth Atcheson.

I'd like to make three points about the broader context relevant to consideration of the court challenges program. It has been a modest but important and uniquely Canadian portage between some very challenging spaces for women and girls: public policy, the courts, and the private sector.

Primary responsibility for improving equality for women rests first with the Government of Canada, in the case of our international commitments, and with all governments, in the case of our constitutional standards. It is ironic that Canada's signing of the Beijing Declaration in 1995 marks the peak of public commitment to reducing women's inequality.

Whatever gender-management system we had has been dismantled by successive governments. As this committee has observed, newer processes such as gender-based analysis have been paid lip service over more than a decade.

Despite our capacity as a nation, Canada does not have a thorough and precise gender action plan with specific goals and demonstrable outcomes in such areas as women's economic security and prosperity or women's safety and health that takes into account our diverse situations. The argument that the state should not be funding challenges to its own decisions lacks legitimacy if the state chooses to ignore or avoid its commitments.

Second, the more scope the courts have to decide matters that touch on public policy for identifiable groups, the greater the access to courts should be for those groups. We spend considerable amounts of public resources on ensuring that people and organizations in Canada have access to various parts of the government, including parliamentarians.

Today is an example of that. All the things that work for other parts of the government do not work for courts. We cannot send an unstamped letter to the court. We cannot pick up a telephone and call a judge or come to a courtroom like a constituency office for a talk. We cannot utilize Service Canada. It takes specialized skills and dollars for disbursements. If we want people living in Canada to have confidence in matters that are important to them in their day-to-day lives, and to have confidence that those things will be considered in all venues, then they have to feel that they have access.

There is value in diverse public engagement in our fundamental institutions. This is just a quick quote from Louise Arbour in April of this year:

Central to the position of the Charter in Canadian federalism is the idea that...the greatest protection for individual rights...comes in large, pluralistic environments. Conversely, the greater danger comes from small, homogeneous communities who lack the imagination and the means to deal effectively with competing individual claims from within, specially the claims that question the apparent homogeneity.

Finally, questions about how to support access to justice for equality for women have to take into account available capacity from all sources. Women and girls face significant challenges in private sector fundraising that have no immediate or easy solution. We cannot easily substitute a private dollar for a public dollar.

Women are the backbone of volunteers in Canada, and all of our organizations run on significant volunteer commitment. That's not enough.

The pool for donations in Canada looks large: $9 billion 2004. The number of donors, however, is smaller than you might assume. Just over 20% of Canadians provide just over 80% of donations. Most revenues are concentrated among a comparatively small number of large entities. In 2003, 12% of organizations accounted for 89% of total revenues in the not-for-profit sector. That means the other 88%, which includes all of the organizations that work for women, live on 11%.

Foundations and corporations provide very limited funding to organizations or projects designed to advance or empower women. Best estimates are that only 5% to 10% of foundation and corporate donations in Canada--and it's the same in the U.S.--go directly to women and girls. Donations to universal programs do not necessarily benefit women and girls, and although there is limited research on this point, the research is very clear.

Canada's leadership in both the public and the private sectors is quick to cite human rights and our charter as national strengths and achievements, as distinctly Canadian characteristics. If they value them, they should support them in a manner consistent with the means available to them, just as we do.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you very much, Ms. Atcheson.

Now we go to Ms. McIvor.

[Sharon McIvor, Lawyer, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, and thank you to the committee for inviting me to come and speak to you today.

My name is Sharon McIvor. I am a Nlaka’pamux woman from the south-central part of British Columbia. I'm an aboriginal woman, an Indian woman. I am a squaw--one of the women who are probably the least respected, have the least resources, and are the most disadvantaged in our country, one of those women who take their history from the original people of the country.

However, throughout my lifetime I have not had equal access to many things. I've had a lot of discrimination and have been disadvantaged in many ways. I am probably one of the more privileged of the aboriginal women in Canada, because of my place and my space.

The charter in 1985 provided me and my sisters with an opportunity to address some of the historical wrongs that were brought by the Indian Act. It was with absolute glee that I looked at this instrument and thought, “We can do something finally.” We have women, aboriginal women--Mary Two-Axe Earley, Jeannette Lavell, Sandra Lovelace-- who for many years looked at this piece of legislation that stripped us of our rights because we were women.

When they reinstated some of those rights they did it in such a way that it still diminished us in relation to the men in our communities. I looked at that piece of legislation and I thought, great, Canada has provided us with something that we can take to try to get some kind of fairness.

In addition to that they also provided us with some kind of money, because to take a charter challenge in Canada today, if you don't have $100,000 in your back pocket, you don't go anywhere. The court challenges program provided half of that, but it was enough, along with the generosity of some lawyers, that we were able to take it forward.

My case is challenging the ongoing discrimination in the Indian Act. I had many conversations with various Ministers of Indian Affairs since 1985 about the unfairness of that, plus the unfairness of the matrimonial property issue. The Ministers of Indian Affairs over the course of the years that I've talked to them told me they would not touch the Indian Act with a ten-foot pole. So we couldn't look at legislative change without going to the courts.

My case started in July 1990. I was finally able to get before the courts in October 2006--16 years later. Throughout that period of time we were fighting against a fully funded government team that worked hard to prevent us from getting into the courtroom. Had I not had the support of the court challenges program and the support of two lawyers who gave freely of time that they will never be reimbursed for, never be paid for, we would not have made it into the courtroom.

As all of you know now, it was successful. Madam Justice Ross said that the Indian Act discriminates against Indian women in that it treats the descendants of Indian women differently from the descendants of Indian men and it unfairly advantages Indian men.

In June that happened. In July the Government of Canada appealed. They appealed the decision even though their own advisers said that it is not a winner, that they are not going to win this one; it is definitely in violation of the charter. But they appealed it.

In August they went to court and asked that Madam Justice Ross's order be stayed. So the decision that gave me victory for myself, my son, and my grandchildren will not be put into place, at least until we get to the B.C. Court of Appeal.

The B.C. Court of Appeal is going to cost about $120,000. I do not have $120,000. My family does not have $120,000. I have no resources.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

You have one minute, please.

[Sharon McIvor]

I have no resources, and lack of resources means we cannot mount a defence of this excellent decision at the B.C. Court of Appeal.

It seems that the 16 years it took us to get to court, because the government knew it was going to be a loser.... And now they've appealed it and they've stripped from me the access to the resources I might have had to defend my excellent decision. This is a mechanism I cannot overcome. If I cannot mount a defence, the decision will be lost.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Irene Mathyssen]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to all the witnesses, the presenters today.

We now will go to a round of questioning. This is a seven-minute round. We'll begin with Ms. Neville, please.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll be sharing my time with Ms. Minna.

Let me begin by thanking all of you for coming here today and thanking you all for the leadership you take on behalf of Canadian women.

At the risk of singling out anyone, I particularly want to acknowledge Ms. Day for the many roles you have taken and the many times you have spoken out, both before this committee and in other forums on behalf of women across the country, women of all communities.

I'd like to focus my questions on Ms. McIvor's case. What you didn't tell us about was the fact that your inequities came about through the unintended consequences of Bill C-31.

Everyone is very much aware of the situation you find yourself in. Now the government has stayed the decision. They put up the barriers but removed the ability for you to move forward. Could you talk a little bit further about what this means for aboriginal women across the country, the inability to move forward and appeal the decision of the B.C. court?

[Sharon McIvor]

Thank you for the question.

It is estimated that approximately 200,000 women and their descendants are in my situation. The fact that the court granted the stay of execution of the order and the fact that if I cannot mount a defence to it means that I and all these others who will benefit from the case will have no benefit. Because if we can't defend it, the government will automatically win.