Mr. Speaker, there has been a fair bit of a thread of fallacy that has run throughout the speeches that have been made today. It is the fallacy that these cases would not be heard, that there is no way they would have their day in court if it were not for the Court Challenges Program.
I need to state for the record and for the Canadian public that is blatantly false. It is untrue. These cases have been, can be and will continue to be heard in the courts quite aside from court challenges funding. It is important for language rights and equality rights cases to be heard and they can in fact be heard without the Court Challenges Program.
There are other means by which, as they say, poor dispossessed groups that do not have the resources can achieve resource to take issues to the courts. There are wealthy individuals. There are foundations. There is legal aid as well, which is a very good suggestion because it is based on a means test. If those people have a valid case they can have it brought forward and paid for by the taxpayer in that manner.
What we have here is a major problem. The Court Challenges Program in my view is not committed to equality as clarified by judges but rather to their own predetermined understanding of equality. They already have this set idea of what is equality. Then they only allow in and shunt down the road those who meet the particular definition. As we said before legal aid is one means. There are others, as I have suggested, that could be explored as well.
The Court Challenges Program funds interest groups, not individuals. The hon member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar referred to Ailsa Warkinson, a lady out of Saskatoon, my home city, who had to link up with a group because she had not been corporally corrected and therefore was bringing her case forward on that basis. Rather it is an interest group. It is a group with a cause, with an agenda.
Also we mentioned before that there were groups. I read from one group that makes the point that “there are many court cases in which we did not intervene or initiate simply because we lacked the funds”. They did not have access to the Court Challenges Program because they did not meet the definition of equality of that biased group which sits on the Court Challenges Program board. These other groups are cut off, shut out and not allowed in. In every case we have been opposed by organizations which were funded by the Court Challenges Program.
Then there is the myth of disadvantaged groups without access that have been made much of today. There are groups that have wanted and needed the funding, that do not have the resources or do not have the reserves. They have been put at a decided disadvantage because time and time again they have been turned away and not allowed any access to the Court Challenges Program.
The charter recognizes certain disadvantaged groups. It is natural, the myth goes, that they should get funding to help them catch up to the rest of us. If that were the case, both sides of the argument need to be heard. Both sides need to be heard in court. That remains. We go to court presuming that one side is right. Therefore there is a necessity in a democratic system, in a proper judicial setting, for both sides to be heard.
As my colleague before me mentioned we have had this great beast of judicial activism beginning to rear its head in Canada, this judicial imperialism, the end run around democracy, usurping the supremacy of parliament. The Court Challenges Program is trying to re-engineer society and set the social policy agenda. It is doing an end run around the elected representatives of the people of Canada.
If groups with social causes want to push an agenda, if they want to push a cause célèbre, they should put a candidate forward at election time. They should get involved in the political process and push that agenda as hard as they want. That is their right. They should not attempt to do it by way of an end run around the courts, usurping the supremacy of parliament.
Obviously I object to the Court Challenges Program. I will attempt once again to seek unanimous consent of the House to have the foregoing motion before us deemed adopted and passed.