Mr. Speaker, on Monday, March 19, 2007, the government presented its budget to the House of Commons. Today, we are debating the budget implementation act. What I would like to do now is address the budget in light of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, whose 25th anniversary we are now commemorating and indeed celebrating.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is, in effect, a veritable people's charter of rights and freedoms because it has had a transformative impact not only on our laws, but on our lives. In particular, it has had a transformative impact on the most vulnerable amongst us, be they the aboriginal people, the disabled, women and the like.
If we go around the country and ask people, as I did when I was the minister of justice and since then, if they are better off now than they were before the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted, the answer is invariably yes. When we speak to the vulnerable among us, we see that it is particularly true. This is especially important because the test of a just society is how it protects those who are the most vulnerable.
Regrettably, the budget not only fails to meet the needs of all Canadians, particularly those of the vulnerable, but it dismantles the very institutions and instruments that were created to protect the most vulnerable and to defend their rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In particular, the budget, among other things, ignores the need for a comprehensive and sustainable legal aid system, dismantles the Law Commission of Canada, and the court challenges program, fails to meet the needs of our aboriginal people, and does a disservice to women and students. Let me look at these particular areas in turn.
Number one, on the matter of legal aid, one of the last initiatives in which I engaged as the minister of justice was to preside over a meeting of federal, provincial and territorial ministers of justice in this country. At that meeting, the ministers there assembled unanimously recommended the need for a comprehensive and sustainable legal aid system for Canada.
The ministers understood then, and it is important to reaffirm now, that, for example, section 10(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms confers upon an arrested person the right to retain and instruct counsel without delay; that article 14(3)(d) of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights confers upon an accused person the right to legal assistance and goes on to stipulate that this legal assistance is to be provided by the government if the accused cannot pay for it; that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is to provide as much protection in our domestic law as international human rights laws provide, as exemplified by the international covenant. For example, international law imposes upon Canada an obligation to provide legal aid to indigent people and to protect the rights of indigent accused; therefore, section 10(b) of the charter can be said to constitutionalize our international obligations in this regard.
Moreover, this constitutional responsibility, as we have taken note of late, is particularly compelling now as there are more and more indigents before the courts without legal assistance, and therefore, in the absence of such legal assistance, for which we have a constitutional responsibility to provide. We are arguably in the face of people being denied the right to a fair trial.
What is true with respect to the need for comprehensive criminal legal aid is no less true with respect to the need for civil legal aid, because here the absence of civil legal aid impacts disproportionately on the most vulnerable amongst us. We only have to look at child custody proceedings to see the impact with respect to the absence of civil legal aid or where claimants are seeking to exercise their rights, particularly the elderly with respect to social assistance or with respect to aboriginal people, and I can go on.
The absence of civil legal aid, together with the absence of criminal legal aid, speaks to the importance of a comprehensive responsibility that we now have to in fact bring into play. I am delighted that the leader of our party has spoken about it and has said that if this party were to form the government we would both increase criminal legal aid and make provision for civil legal aid.
Indeed, this would reflect and represent the open federalism that the new government, as it calls itself, speaks about but does not implement, because this open federalism, if the Conservatives were to implement it, would act upon the unanimous recommendations of federal, provincial and territorial ministers of justice to in fact have a comprehensive and sustainable legal aid program.
That brings me to the second area, and that is the dismantling of the Law Commission of Canada. Here I can speak from my own experience and involvement as a minister of justice, and before that as a law professor and human rights lawyer. This is a Law Commission of Canada that was dismantled even though it played an indispensable role in the lives of Canadians, in bridging the disparities between what might be law on the books and law in action, providing to me as minister indispensable research and advice with respect to matters that come before a minister, and which also provided through the minister independent research advice and related policy options to the Parliament of Canada, to whom the minister reports.
This engaged Canadians in an ongoing conversation about their rights, about the disparities, and sometimes about what is law on the books and the exercise of that law in action, particularly in terms of partnerships that the Law Commission of Canada formed with the youth of Canada, the elderly of Canada and the aboriginal people of Canada. Therefore, it is not surprising that the occasion of the dismantling of the Law Commission of Canada was regarded as a blemish not only on Canada but on our international reputation.
I can tell members that wherever I travelled internationally, whether it be in Argentina or Europe, I was asked how we could go ahead and dismantle the Law Commission of Canada which, apart from the value that it certainly had for us as Canadians, had value for others internationally in terms of the independent quality of expertise, research, advice and counsel. It was acting as a kind of international counsel to the world community, particularly with respect to how it would protect, among other things, the rights of the vulnerable.
That is why I am delighted as well that the leader of our party has announced that not only would he restore the Law Commission of Canada but he would protect it in law because the Law Commission of Canada is a creature of Parliament. Being a creature of Parliament and answerable to Parliament, it should be protected by Parliament as well. Therefore, the Liberals would reinstitute a Law Commission of Canada and protect it in such a manner that it could not be dismantled by administrative whim or fiat in opposition to the needs of the people of Canada.
This brings me now to the third area and that is the court challenges program. The court challenges program is not as it has sometimes been spoken of by members of the new government, as they call themselves, who should look more to our experience with it and see that it has not been the vestige of the special interests as they have claimed; rather, it has been there for the people of Canada to promote and protect equality rights and to promote and protect the rights of the most vulnerable.
The court challenges program was there to promote universal access to the exercise of the rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and to promote and protect the equality rights provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In its principles and precedents, in a manner in which it found expression before the courts, the court challenges program became responsible for articulating those arguments before the courts that ended up in the elucidation of those principles and precedents, which provided the protection for the most vulnerable among us as it protected the fundamental rights and freedoms under the charter.
That brings me now to the question of the aboriginal peoples and the disregard by the government with respect to the Kelowna accords. The disregard for the $5 billion set aside for aboriginal needs meant also the disregarding of the seven Rs of aboriginal justice that we sought to put in place.
When I speak about the seven Rs, I am referring to: the recognition of the aboriginal peoples, the original inhabitants of this country; the respect for their specific and distinguishable constitutional status under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and under the Constitution; the redress by the government for past wrongs; the redressing of the over-representation of aboriginal people in the criminal justice system; the under-representation of aboriginal people in the justice system of judges, lawyers and prosecutors and the like; and the importance of bringing about the kind of responsiveness that our constitutional framework requires in our relationship with aboriginal people.
I will conclude--
