Canadian Heritage committee  Certainly. With this program, as I mentioned before, at the end of the day it's the minister who appoints the seven experts for each part of the program, who decide which cases get funded. If they appoint people that all have their own particular view of the Constitution, then it's more likely that they will get the cases before the courts that are more likely to lead to the particular policy outcomes that they prefer.

Canadian Heritage committee  I don't believe that merely amending the program would fix the concerns about bias, because, at the end of the day, particular cases that get funded would always be chosen by a minister. If you did not have a court challenges program, instead you would have a situation where individuals choose which particular civil society organizations they wish to support with their own funding.

Canadian Heritage committee  —facing potential violations of their rights can have their cases heard in a timely fashion. Second, politicians could be braver about defending rights and freedoms by proposing rights-protecting legislation, by speaking out when other politicians propose rights-infringing laws or by intervening in cases.

Canadian Heritage committee  Good afternoon, Madam Chair. My name is Josh Dehaas. I'm counsel with the Canadian Constitution Foundation. The CCF is a non-partisan legal charity dedicated to defending Canadians' rights and freedoms through education, communications and litigation. The CCF is funded by individual donors across Canada who support our view of a freer and fairer Canada.