Mr. Speaker, I must shake my head when I listen to the speech from the member on the government side because she is essentially saying that if there were a dispute with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that the decision should be made by Parliament.
That is a dangerous statement to make when we look at the history of this country and its abuse of minority rights. We have had many abuses, and the member referred to a number of them, such as the Asian Exclusion Act, the Chinese head tax, the internment of Ukrainians, the policy of none-is-too-many for the Jews and a racial discrimination policy for immigration.
The point is that the Constitution of Canada is very clear. It says that the Constitution of Canada is the supreme law of Canada and any law that is inconsistent with the provision of the Constitution is, to the extent of the inconsistency is of no force or effect. That is section 52 of the Constitution of Canada.
The courts are the interpreters of the Constitution, not the Parliament of Canada. The member is essentially saying that she is against the court challenges program because she does not want the courts to decide on minority rights.
I find that very dangerous because her speech was written by officials of the government, her governing party, exposing their neo-con ideology. They are saying that they essentially want to ride roughshod over the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution of Canada. We cannot go to court to challenge something that is unconstitutional if we do not have the money. The court challenges program levelled the playing field so that a person would actually have the resources to fight for their rights which affect so many Canadians.
What the member has been saying is that we should ignore the Constitution.