Mr. Speaker, this evening we are talking about the court challenges program. In September 2006, the Conservative government announced that the court challenges program would be abolished, in order to save a measly $5.6 million. A large number of organizations condemned these cuts, and rightly so.
That program was created to allow individuals and citizens' groups to be on a level playing field when going to court against a government because they feel it is interfering with one or several of their constitutional rights.
Let us not forget that when citizens must take the government to court to seek justice, the latter has a slew of lawyers at its service, while ordinary citizens must use their own savings to defend themselves. Since court costs are huge, these people could rely on the court challenges program to balance things out, so that both sides would be represented fairly.
Fairness—yes, fairness—requires that each and everyone be entitled to full and fair representation before the courts. This principle is incredibly easy to understand, except for those killers of justice that Conservative governments, both federal and provincial, are in Canada.
The current government, which is made up of quite the mix of Reform, Alliance, neo-Liberal, Conservative and failed Liberal members, is suggesting that—listen to this—it will never violate the Constitution and, therefore, that citizens do not need a court challenges program. However, abolishing this program is, in and of itself, a violation of the law. So, this is a fine example of hypocrisy.
The government violated the legislation not on one or two points, but on five grounds.
First of all, the decision to eliminate the court challenges program goes against the contribution agreement reached between the Department of Canadian Heritage and the court challenges program, with respect to the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada.
Second, the decision goes against the constitutional principle of respect for and protection of minorities.
Third, the government has an obligation to act in favour of minorities, under section 16 of the Canadian Charter that was passed right here.
Fourth, the decision also contravenes the federal government's obligation to official language minority communities.
Fifth, the decision contravenes part VII of the Official Languages Act, particularly sections 41, 42 and 43.
Furthermore, the Commissioner of Official Languages reviewed 118 complaints received in 2006 and 2007 regarding the elimination of the court challenges program. In his final report, submitted on October 9, 2007, to the complainants and government stakeholders involved, he urges the current government to reconsider its decision to slash the court challenges program and other programs that serve linguistic minorities, failing which it could face other court cases.
There is a serious paradox here. When the current federal government appeared before the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in May 2006, it extolled the value of the program and acknowledged how important it was to maintain it because of the legal issues that still had to be addressed. The very government that praised the program in May 2006 turned around and eliminated it in the fall of 2006. Some wires crossed and there was a short circuit. How unfortunate. Listen closely to what it said about the program. This is from the Conservative government before us here today:
The court challenges program, funded by the Government of Canada, provides funding for test cases of national significance in order to clarify the rights of official language minority communities and the equality rights of historically disadvantaged groups. An evaluation of the [court challenges program] in 2003 found that it has been successful in supporting important court cases that have a direct impact on the implementation of rights and freedoms covered by the program. [The individuals and groups benefiting from the [court challenges program] are located in all regions of the country and generally come from official language communities or disadvantaged groups, such as Aboriginal people, women, racial minorities, gays and lesbians, etc.] The Program has also contributed to strengthening both language and equality-seeking groups' networks. The Program has been extended to March 31, 2009.
Yet that same government went on to abolish the program in the fall of 2006. I heard the member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell say the word “hypocrisy”. I get the sense that he does not really know what that word means, because the government itself is the hypocrite here.
Representatives of various organizations expressed their consternation to the Standing Committee on Official Languages after the government announced that it was going to abolish the program. The Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada, the Assemblée de la francophonie de l'Ontario, the Fédération des associations de juristes d'expression française de common law, the French Language Health Services Network of Eastern Ontario, Saskatchewan's francophone school division No. 310, the Assemblée communautaire fransaskoise, St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan, the Association canadienne-française de l'Alberta, the Alliance Jeunesse-Famille de l'Alberta Society, the Réseau santé albertain, and the Société des Acadiens et des Acadiennes du Nouveau-Brunswick have all spoken out against this disgrace.
The société Maison de la Francophonie de Vancouver, the Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique, the Centre francophone de Toronto, the Association des municipalités francophones du Nouveau-Brunswick and the Association des parents francophones du Nouveau-Brunswick were also dismayed by the decision. I hope that the Conservatives will feel a sense of shame at hearing the long list of groups that are working hard to protect minorities, unlike the government, which is doing its best to undermine them.
The Société Saint-Thomas d'Aquin de l'Île-du-Prince-Édouard, Réseau santé de la Nouvelle-Écosse, Conseil économique du Nouveau-Brunswick, Autorité régionale francophone du Centre-Nord No. 2, Fédération franco-ténoise and SOS Montfort have also expressed their disapproval. The current Minister of Health, Minister of Finance and Minister of the Environment did everything they could to shut down the Montfort hospital, the only francophone hospital in the province. They tried to shut it down, although it is a very well-managed hospital and sets an example for other Ontario hospitals when it comes to finances. But because it was a franco-Ontarian hospital, these individuals, under the Harris government, did everything they could to close the hospital. It is completely disgraceful.
All these groups appeared before the committee to show that the court challenges program is an ally in the fight against anyone trying destroy the francophone minority fibre in this country.
Representatives from the Quebec English School Boards Association, the Association des parents fransaskois, the Commission nationale des parents francophones, the Quebec Community Groups Network and the Faculty of Law at the University of Moncton, just to name a few, all came to say that it was a very bad choice and was ideologically unacceptable.
In December 2007—not very long ago in the history of the world—in response to the objections to the abolition of the court challenges program, the Standing Committee on Official Languages recommended:
That the Government of Canada reinstate the Court Challenges Program or create another program in order to meet objectives in the same way.
This sort of recommendation reflects a desire to repair the unspeakable damage that has been done. Equity between people must be restored at all levels of government so that everyone can have access to all the legal avenues they need to defend their constitutional rights.
When it decided to eliminate the court challenges program, the current Conservative government said that the program was not cost-effective. This argument was shot down by the chair of the program in his brief to the committee. He said:
No one ever informed the people in charge of the program that it was being reviewed. No one contacted the staff or the members of the board of directors or asked for information about the program. What sort of a review was it? What were the findings? When it announced that it was cutting the program, the government did not refer to any findings to justify its decision.
This is definitely the wrong way to go about doing things.
It is clear that the court challenges program was abolished for purely ideological reasons. The Conservatives do not care a bit about minority rights. Lord Durham is their model, and they are discomfited by the French fact. The Conservatives are discomfited by minority groups such as disabled persons and gays and by organizations that defend new Quebeckers and new Canadians, women's groups and organizations that defend minorities. The court challenges program helped all these groups. True to their pitiful track record when it comes to respecting minorities, the Conservatives simply abolished the program. This is completely unacceptable. I do not dare think about what a Conservative majority would do.
Funding provided for a number of groups was an effective way to advance the human rights agenda in Canada and Quebec, in some cases, in the two areas the program targeted. Many of the cases funded by the program resulted in important language rights precedents in Canadian constitutional law. They made a significant contribution to official language minority rights in Canada.
For example, take the case of Doucet-Boudreau v. Nova Scotia, which was mentioned today. This was a case defended in Nova Scotia regarding the education rights of the Acadian minority under section 23.
I also referred to the Montfort Hospital case, which was about further developing and recognizing the unwritten constitutional principle of protecting minorities. First developed in the reference relating to the secession of Quebec, the court recognized that governments must first take into account the possible impact of their decisions on official language minorities.
In Arsenault-Cameron v. Prince Edward Island, the Supreme Court confirmed the important principle of true equality and its application in cases stemming from section 23.
There was also R. v. Beaulac, a case dealing with the right to be heard by a decision-maker in the official language of choice of the individual who understands that language.
With regard to the measure to create educational institutions comparable to those of the majority, this measure is now applied in a fair number of provinces and territories, such as Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and the Northwest Territories.
It is very important to convey this to those opposite, who do not have the slightest idea of the damage they are inflicting. Do they truly care about an equal balance between the citizens and the government they face in pursuing the rights they consider to be theirs? Abolishing this program, which costs very little in terms of the annual federal budget of $238 billion, is an ideological choice that crushes the weakest by depriving them of all the necessary tools that are at the disposal of the government, with its host of lawyers, when it goes to court to attempt to suppress minority rights.
Minorities have a right to defend themselves.
From 1994 to 2005, the court challenges program opened some 1,671 files in response to funding applications. The report states:
The panels [under the Court Challenges Program] approved funding in 1,099 cases (66%). There were 821 files approved relating to equality rights and 278 relating to language rights. A significant number of funding applications approved relating to equality rights fall into six areas: discrimination against Aboriginal peoples (174), general physical disabilities (104), sex (94), race (88) and sexual orientation (75). With respect to language rights, half of the funding requests approved pertaining to language rights involve education rights (143) and, to a lesser extent, language of work, communication and service rights (55).
Minorities are being told to forget about the court challenges program—obviously the Conservatives are the ones saying this—and to turn to small claims court. Something is wrong here.
Society, like the Constitution, is a living thing. It is constantly changing. In our legal tradition, what happened in the past helps shape the future, but what is to be does not necessarily flow from an example in case law. That is why we must ensure the return, for good, of the court challenges program. Unlike the Conservatives, society changes, improves, faces new challenges. Rather than cling to hallowed ideological battles in an attempt to oppress people, the government should demonstrate openness and ensure that minorities of all stripes are guaranteed recognition before any party, including the state at federal, provincial and municipal levels.
People with disabilities won the battle for accessibility against public institutions thanks in part to funding from the court challenges program. Public institutions argued that the cost of installing ramps to enable such a small number of people to enter public and private buildings with ease was too high. Thanks to the court challenges program, people with disabilities won their fight. Now they have the ramps they need. Public institutions and many private ones now follow this rule and make sure that their buildings are accessible to people with disabilities.
French-language schools serving francophone minorities outside Quebec were closed in 1871 in New Brunswick; in 1890 in Manitoba; in 1912 in Ontario; and in 1931 in Saskatchewan. Those are just the cases I know of. Francophones did not get their schools back until 50, 60, even 80 years later. Assimilation wreaked havoc. Obtuse governments bent on making us disappear from the ethno-linguistic landscape came very close to succeeding.
The court challenges program must be brought back to ensure that things like this never happen again.
