Justice committee  Well, I do poverty advocacy in my home province because legal aid doesn't do it. What we used to do with the CAP agreement was use that when we were arguing cases. It got no farther than local and provincial appeal levels; it never got farther.

Justice committee  Today my presentation has been mostly around the reinstatement of the court challenges program and what it should cover, but I fully support our putting some ties into transfer payments that go to provinces. I think that the government should reopen—and this is a form of access to justice—conversations with provinces and territories and set out what those standards will be because the CAP agreement, in 1966 when it was brought in, helped to standardize poverty across the country.

Justice committee  I guess I'd just like to remind everybody at the table that Canada cannot ratify these covenants unless every province and territory agrees to uphold the rights within. That happened in 1976. That binds our provinces and our territories equally to the commitments made within that International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Justice committee  I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that right now the courts are not ruling in our favour. We haven't been able to get a lot of cases into the courts either for the past—

Justice committee  We have started seeing that. I mentioned in my brief that we have seen the courts, as well as lawyers, starting to look at...and dissenting judges are using international human rights to defend their positions as well.

Justice committee  Yes, through our ministry, we lobby for provincial monies to cover more in legal aid than it does at this point. I live in Saskatchewan. In 1987, the government changed the mandate of legal aid so that it can only cover matrimonial issues and not even.... It is only family law. It's more around the children.

Justice committee  All right. As I was leaving the Westin hotel this morning, where I've been graciously housed, a few steps away there was a man laying on the street, homeless. That shouldn't happen so few metres away from the House of Commons. In front of the Lord Elgin hotel a woman was holding a cap out and asking for money.

Justice committee  I want to add one thing.

Justice committee  I have these. I couldn't translate them, but I have these for others after.

Justice committee  Thank you very much. I would also like to thank you for inviting the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues to present today. I am the chairperson of the Charter Committee on Poverty Issues, and we lovingly know it as CCPI. I joined CCPI as someone who was living in poverty at the time, and that was back in 1989.

Justice committee  No, not on the panel, I am on the board.