I think it's important to remember that something like the court challenges program fits in with a larger profile that Canada historically has in terms of its role in the international community. I make these comments as a professor of international human rights law, and I say the evidence we have, to date, is that Canada's role in the international community has seriously eroded over the last several years, and it's an important step. When we start to de-fund programs like that, we are feeding into a larger degeneration of our authority to speak and act on the global stage.
I also want to make a comment about the discussion we've had so far. The remit of this committee is to consider how the de-funding of this program has impacted on minority women and aboriginal women, in particular. I want to keep them front and centre because it's the rights of those ordinary Canadians that are very much at stake here.
When we're talking about what are the gains of the CCP, I think we also need to think about what some of the potential losses are that we're going to experience in the future. Some of the major gains we've achieved have been in the areas of sexual violence against women, an area which Canada has been a world leader in combatting.
What we're seeing now is there have been several cases coming up to the lower levels of the court that are attacking the gains we've made in protecting women who are victims of sexual violence from defendants who are seeking to have access to their records, in protecting them from onerous cross-examination. Those gains are very much under attack and we no longer have the funding to protect them.