Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Churchill.
We are debating a committee report dealing with the court challenges program. I have always, as a member, supported the court challenges program from a distance, in the sense that the program was operated and administered well outside of Parliament, well away from the government and managed by people who had legal expertise and a good perspective on our Canadian laws and institutions.
It was not an expensive program. It was actually quite cost effective. It was a program that looked toward the effective functioning of our laws and our administration.
Set out in our Constitution and in our Charter of Rights are legal rights, equality rights and language rights. However, I should make a quick distinction here. Not all the rights we are talking about here are charter rights. Bundles of rights are contained in our original Constitution and the charter, which was enacted in 1982, 25 years ago, reflected some of those and enhanced others.
However, the point is that the court challenges program was meant to be out there to allow the little guy in Canada, the person who maybe did not have the full clout of having a lawyer on the other end of the phone, to join with others and challenge the current law or administration in Canada for the purpose of complying with those very noble objectives of our charter and our Constitution.
I for one did not get a chance to see the court challenges program work up close and most Canadians did not get a chance. The probable reason is that most Canadians take the general quality of our laws and administration for granted. They tend to focus from time to time on perhaps what they do not like rather than all the stuff that is out there that is working quite functionally and serving us well. In the case of the court challenges program, it was actually doing a pretty good job.
Some people might not like the decisions that the courts eventually came to on cases that were brought by the court challenges program but that is a completely different issue than whether or not the court challenges program was working effectively, and it was. It took care of a lot of people. It was a fine-tuning device that was out there that, from time to time, would challenge the big guys in government, the decision makers in government who refused to budge when they were challenged on fairness in the law. By fairness, I mean fairness connected to the equality rights, the language rights and the legal rights that are in our Constitution.
I will point to two cases that have come to me as a parliamentarian but I will not mention any personal names. I am of the view that the two particular cases will require a court challenge. I am not suggesting that they should have been part of the court challenges program but it is a fact that not every component of our government is functioning perfectly and in compliance with the law.
No matter where we look, we will find flaws. We are all human and our government administration is run and operated by humans. People dig their heels in and some people make mistakes. We probably make mistakes in and around the House here too but I cannot point to any right now.
In any event, there was the case of one individual who had not obtained his Canadian citizenship after having lived in Canada for several years. He heard his mother was very ill so he rushed back to his home country. His mother recovered within three or four weeks. This person had left Canada without all the documents. He left fairly quickly because he was told that his mother was on her deathbed. He then had to go to the embassy and get papers to return to Canada. Lo and behold, the embassy decided that he could not get a visa to come back because he was inadmissible. This person was a permanent resident of Canada who went back home to check on his mother and the embassy decided he was inadmissible.
Granted there was a basis for the alleged inadmissibility but our laws also contain provisions that enable him to be treated as a permanent resident abroad and he was not. I am looking at this and I know that the administration of that particular section of the immigration law is ultra vires. It is wrong. It should be challenged and that may happen.
In another case, we have a collaboration between the Canada Revenue Agency and Canada Post to circumvent a privacy law enacted by Parliament. Parliament has decided that personal mail under 30 grams in weight may not be opened for inspection. The CRA generally has the ability to inspect mail coming into Canada but it does not have the right to open and inspect mail that is under 30 grams.
What does the agency do when it has one of these little envelopes? Canada Post and the CRA will keep it. They then send a letter to the Canadian telling the person that they do not have the right to open his or her mail because it is under 30 grams but that they would like the person's consent. They then tell the person that if he or she does not give consent, they will send it back to the sender outside the country and mark the letter as undeliverable.
That is a lie. Of course it is deliverable because Canada Post and the CRA were able to send a letter asking for consent in the first place. Under the Canada Post Corporation Act that mail is in the course of post and Canada Post has a legal obligation to see that it is delivered. Just because CRA cannot open it and inspect it does not mean it cannot be delivered.
In any event, CRA could open and inspect that letter if it went to court and got a warrant. However, the procedure that CRA is using is illegal. It circumvents what Parliament has laid down for our personal privacy when it comes to mail.
One of these instances occurred under the Liberal government and the second occurred under the Conservatives. It is not the government itself that I am challenging here. It is the administration that I am challenging. I am saying that in both of these instances, the immigration department, the CRA and Canada Post are seriously off side in terms of the enforcement and the administration of the law.
I hope these incidents will be challenged. The court challenges program was a wonderful, effective and efficient institution. I regret that it is not currently being funded by the government.