Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the motion before the House. I will concentrate on the egregious cut and elimination on human rights and justice issues.
In particular, I would like to start with the elimination of the court challenges program.
I am from Moncton, New Brunswick. It is the cradle of Acadia and its capital. We have many Acadians who speak French. It is very important to emphasize that Acadians know what it is like to be a minority.
Of all the obligations of members of parliament, the most important and vital is to protect human rights, civil rights, the rights of individuals across the country. Throughout Canada we have minorities with religious and language rights.
Moncton, New Brunswick has a long history of fighting for the minority rights of Acadians.
The story really starts in the 1700s when the Acadian people settled most of the parts of what is now New Brunswick and what was then Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia was split into two parts, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with New Brunswick being the better part, seeing no members from Nova Scotia near me.
What happened is that the Acadian population in 1755 was put to an egregious deportation in the time of colonial wars, which we will not get into, but essentially they were from that time forward treated as second class citizens in the region.
It was a long time from 1755 to 1960 but in 1960 the first French Acadian premier of a province that is 33.5% bilingual, or French and Acadian in population, was elected. His name was Louis J. Robichaud and he instituted a program of equal opportunity.
I will paint a picture of New Brunswick in the 1960s. French, a language spoken by one-third of the population, 40% in the city of Moncton, was not spoken at municipal hall meetings nor spoken in the provincial government. This was long before Pierre Trudeau's visionary Official Languages Act and, I might add, in a brief moment of non-partisanship, long before the vision of Progressive Conservative Premier Richard Hatfield of New Brunswick who brought forward the official languages act at the provincial level in the 1980s. It also was long before 2002 when the city of Moncton, where the largest number of Acadians live in the province in one place, became officially bilingual. This is a continuum from 1755 to today.
What is important to remember is in New Brunswick in the time that I grew up, notwithstanding the great numbers of population who were French speaking Acadians, they had very few schools. They were fighting to keep their own hospitals. I will keep it at schools and hospitals because the other pillar I believe of social justice requires that we look at the judicial system.
The judicial system, because it was more federally regulated than the other two pillars that I wish to delve into, was very much ahead of its time with respect to according linguistic rights to the French speaking minority.
In the realm of schools let me paint the picture that many French speaking Acadians in New Brunswick were told. They were told that they would not go to school but that they would learn a trade. The schools in the area of Moncton, in southeastern New Brunswick and in other parts of New Brunswick did not have sufficient spaces for francophones until equal opportunity and Louis J. Robichaud.
Hospital care was not what it should have been either. It was primarily religious in nature. It eschewed public funding and did not get the public funding it deserved. With time and, I will say, with the progressive measures of people like Richard Hatfield, following on Frank McKenna as well, measures were adopted to certainly visit égalité dans ce secteur.
This drives me to the main point of how the cuts with respect to linguistic minorities in this country are absolutely shameful. The Conservative government should be ashamed of turning the clock back on the advances that have been made over time, particularly with respect to minority rights. With that I am speaking about the wholesale elimination of the court challenges program.
It can be asked, “Isn't that just a fund”, as the Conservative hyperbole would lead us to believe, “that funds lawyers to fight cases and otherwise increase their income?” No, it is not. I will give two good examples of what the fund is about.
First, it helped to ensure the survival of Montfort hospital in an area where the minority population required health care. This program provided funding for the new school L'Odyssée, which will open its doors in Moncton, New Brunswick.
These are but two examples that I hope bring home to the Conservatives the importance of the court challenges program.
The Montfort Hospital we do not have to speak about in great detail. It was a very well publicized case with the Mike Harris government. There are vestiges of the Mike Harris legacy in this House and in the government. We see it with the discussions and in the cuts that are made with respect to how government operates today. It is very much like Mike Harris in Ontario.
I will not go into a complete brief of that. There is not the time, but there is time to explain that the Mike Harris government and many of the people who represent the Ottawa region in this House for the other side were all in favour of closing a hospital that served the needs of a French-speaking minority in this region. That was unacceptable.
The challenge was put under the court challenges program and it was won, legally and then politically. That is an important process to remember. Often the political battle is won after the legal battle is won. This may be another non-partisan moment where I say all governments are going to comply with the law, which is why we are so confident on this side that Kyoto will be implemented by the government because it will obey the law. The law told the provincial government of Ontario at the time that it must keep the Montfort Hospital open and it did.
Let me explain the other case that is real and has a connection to the elimination of the court challenges program.
A group of people in Moncton, New Brunswick decided, because of their growing numbers, that they deserved a school for their school-aged children, grades one to nine, in Moncton. They filed the brief against the provincial government. They started the action. The action was never pursued because when it was publicized and a copy was sent to the provincial government of the day, it agreed to build the school.
This program does not challenge the federal government, as the former minister of justice suggests. It challenges other levels of government that have less open laws toward minorities, and it should have been kept. It is there to protect people who cannot protect themselves. It is there to encourage municipalities, boards, agencies and commissions, and even provincial governments, to do the right thing.
These are two cases that exemplify the reason why the elimination of the court challenges program is an unacceptable measure. It shows the meanness, the narrowness, and the unconstitutional posture of the government. It shows that it is just Mike Harris writ large, on the blanket of this country, and right-thinking Canadians will not stand for it.
It is why I am very proud that our leader and other members of this chamber have risen today and said this is enough. There is no vision that includes everyone in Canada on that side. We will take the time it takes in this House to show to Canadians that the vision from that government is not a vision that will sustain a country. It may sustain pockets of people who think like it does, but it does not sustain a patchwork of Canadians who deserve equality rights for minorities and a better country in the future.