Mr. Speaker, I failed to convey the information that I was hoping was relevant and I will try again.
On the strict question of whether we should focus on making better laws, of course, the role of this House and of that other place is to make good laws. However, we have three branches of government in this country: the judiciary, the legislative and the executive. The legislative role is, as my colleague says, to make the best laws possible. The judiciary also has a role in interpreting those laws and determining sometimes whether or not we have made mistakes and that has happened.
That is for laws that are before us now. The difficulty with the member's premise is that the court challenges program in effect deals with much more than that. It deals with laws that existed prior to the advent of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It deals with provincial legislation, and it deals with provincial and federal inaction. I will give him an example.
In Summerside, P.E.I., the francophone community figured it had a right to a school. The provincial government did not accept that. The francophone community went to court, had some support from the court challenges program, and the Supreme Court of Canada determined indeed that it was right and now it has a school. There were no laws in this case. It was a provincial inaction. The court challenges program has that broad a scope, it does not just deal with current legislation that is before us.
In terms of current legislation, I tend to agree. Yet, there has to be an authority beyond us that will make a determination and that is why we have three branches in the government. For the rest, it just does not only deal with that. It deals with everything that came before the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and provincial legislation through actions and inactions. The court challenges program is indeed a necessary ingredient which is recognized internationally, by the way, as something that this country should be proud of. We should continue that program.