Mr. Speaker, we have to put this all into perspective. The court challenges program was first introduced in 1978 and it was during a period of pretty intense debate over language rights and their impact on national unity.
We had the Official Languages Act of 1969. We had Quebec's Charte de la langue française in 1977. We had a number of court cases. So all of this contributed to putting this issue on the front burner. As a result, the government set up the program. With the advent of the charter in 1982, it expanded it to include section 15 rights.
However, today things are different. The two differences today are, first, there is a large, substantial body of case law that has been established from the last three decades; and second, there are less costly ways to fund court challenges and the Department of Justice can do so on a case by case basis.