Mr. Speaker, let me begin with the court challenges program.
There have been a lot of charter challenges that have gone to the Supreme Court which had to do with equality. I will start with one, the rape shield law. As the hon. member knows, women were pretty much put on the stand and raped all over again at times during those cases, and that was a charter challenge which assisted women in this country.
I myself was involved personally with a charter challenge to the Supreme Court to defend immigrant women. In 1986 the government was not providing them with English as a second language classes when they arrived in this country. Only men received them. The assumption was that women did not go to work, therefore they did not need English as a second language. If they did go to work, they did not need the language anyway because they went to factories, I guess, so the government did not give them subsidized language training. We actually had to start a charter challenge, a class action on behalf of immigrant women.
Aboriginal women who were working were not allowed to receive the Canada pension plan and again that was another challenge that went to court. It was upheld and of course today they do.
There were also other challenges for the disabled and so on. I could give long lists. That is no longer possible because the court challenges program has now been eliminated.
There are a lot of other equality issues and challenges that need to be addressed, but there will be no assistance because the government is too afraid to have its own policies and its own laws challenged by its citizens. That is what the program was for.
The hon. member asked about the changes of criteria with respect to the women's programs. The changes mean that organizations that are out there, as they were before, doing research and identifying areas where women do not have equality, such as pay equity, cannot get funded. They are out there informing Canadian women of the areas they need to know about where there is no equality, and then are advocating for them on their behalf to governments at all levels. They cannot get funded, so inequality is not funded. If they are fighting for social justice, again they cannot be funded.
It seems to me that the government is not interested in hearing from anybody who has anything to say about any problems that they may have with any policy the government presents because as far as the government concerned, it is all perfect which of course it is not.