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—