Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm happy to answer further questions from any of you.

Justice committee  What happened under the old program was that merit was assessed by independent experts. I will say—and I don't want to make Ms. Go blush—they did a pretty good job of picking the merits of the case. I am led to believe that the similar process that's used now with the language rights support program is also working really well.

Justice committee  You get what you pay for.

Justice committee  I think they should have the flexibility of being able to fund expert witnesses, but I will tell you that in the equal marriage challenge that I did, my budget was $500 for expert witnesses. The government spent $400,000 on expert witnesses, and I won.

Justice committee  That's right, and they're not always. May I say that a lot of these issues.... Here's where we really face a problem. In some of these cases, it may be that the expert you really need.... I'm doing a case right now dealing with access to sterile injection equipment in prisons. The best model for that is Switzerland.

Justice committee  Thank you very much for your kind words, Mr. Rankin. I love the word “flexibility” that Ms. Go used. That's how the language rights support program works right now. You get really fine people running the program, who get the benefit of seeing all of these cases and seeing the trends in the jurisprudence, and they are in the best position to make the call about where we're going to have the most impact, whether there is an intersectional case or they're seeing how section 7 is evolving, and they pick the cases based on maximum impact.

Justice committee  I wish I had an answer to that. I think it is a problem. Parliament is sovereign and can always repeal a law. I'm not sure there's anything that can be done to fully guarantee it could never be changed. Short of embedding it in the Constitution and making a constitutional amendment, so that we would have something that looked like the German constitution with an obligation to protect rights and to rehabilitate....

Justice committee  Yes, I'm happy to do so, Mr. Cooper. That's an excellent question. Let me use the equal marriage one because I was involved in that. At the time we were contemplating addressing the problem of equal marriage, many groups across the country had views about how to approach that problem.

Justice committee  With respect, Mr. Cooper, I will have to disagree with you on that. I think the record is quite clear that, with the exception of the hate crimes changes, all of the actions that have been taken with respect to sexual orientation have been in response to court rulings. The first legal marriage in Canada took place at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, a church that I attend, and I know at least one member of your committee has attended on occasion.

Justice committee  Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Justice committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. May I say, I fully agree with everything that my long-time friend, Ms. Go, has just said. Egale Canada Human Rights Trust welcomes the opportunity to present to the committee today. Egale is Canada's only national charity promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans human rights through research, education, and community engagement.

Justice committee  I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. I wasn't told about the change of location.