I'm sorry, I have a voice problem today, so I'll try to project a bit more.
I'm grateful to be welcomed here by the honourable members of this committee on behalf of the National Association of Women and the Law, which is an organization I am here to offer a presentation on behalf of.
My name is Margaret Denike. I am a professor of human rights at Carleton University. I have been a member of the National Association of Women and the Law for several years, as well as a member of the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund. I'm familiar with the court challenges program, I guess, through those capacities, but I am speaking just on behalf of NAWL today.
The National Association of Women and the Law is a non-profit organization that has been working to improve the legal status of women in Canada through legal education, research, and law reform advocacy since 1974. We recognize that the advancement of equality rights for women and for various groups that have been historically disadvantaged due to factors such as race, ability, age, ethnicity, and sexual orientation requires a range of approaches and strategies for law reform. These include, among other things, engaging in dialogue, research, and scholarship to educate ourselves and our local and national communities about the circumstances and needs of others; creating new laws and policies to foster respect among individuals and groups and to protect those who are vulnerable to social and political prejudice; and conducting test case interventions and legal challenges to existing discriminatory laws and policies, particularly those that inadvertently and/or adversely affect already disadvantaged groups by failing to take them into account in the first instance.
In our view, achieving a just and equal society means fostering the ways by which justice and equality are achieved. This entails providing funding to the programs and services that enable that. The court challenges program of Canada is a quintessential model, in our view, of such programs. Its mandate is to support the advancement of constitutional equality rights and language rights that are enshrined within the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. NAWL, the National Association of Women and the Law, is thus deeply concerned about the impact of the cancelling of the funding for the court challenges program of Canada, particularly on the disadvantaged groups in our society.
An internationally recognized and celebrated feature of Canada's heritage is our expressed commitment to constitutional values and principles of justice. Canada has been acknowledged for its commitment not only to granting rights to substantive equality within an inclusive and participatory democracy, but to putting in place the means to proactively pursue these rights. These values are universally affirmed in customary international human rights norms and laws. Canada's unique approach to making this commitment through the court challenges program has been explicitly acknowledged and applauded by international experts and committees of the United Nations, including the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in 2003 and the Committee on Social, Cultural and Economic Rights in 2006.
A fundamental tenet of constitutionalism--and this is a word about constitutionalism--is that rights enshrined within constitutions be made available to everyone and not only to the more privileged individuals who have the means and the wherewithal to pursue them. Since its establishment in 1978, the court challenges program of Canada has been instrumental in providing access to justice for individuals and groups that would otherwise not have such access and in enabling them to draw on the constitutional guarantees of section 15 of the charter to bring equality arguments before the courts. The program has ensured that the rights set out in the charter are accessible to all members of Canadian society by assisting with funding for those who cannot afford the costly processes of litigation.
As Beverley McLachlin, the current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, once stated when she was considering whom the charter is designed to benefit and where such rights should apply:
The Charter is not some holy grail which only judicial initiates of the superior courts may touch. The Charter belongs to the people. All law and law-makers that touch the people must conform to it.
I would add that the court challenges program of Canada has worked specifically to ensure the realization of this ideal that all people, particularly those who are disadvantaged or those who represent the interests of the disadvantaged, can make charter claims before the courts.
Part of the inherent logic of our constitutional system or any constitutional system is that funding is required to support some constitutional challenges. Without it, we invariably deny the full range of perspectives on the Constitution to play out, particularly the perspectives of those who are economically disadvantaged. It is a requirement of constitutionalism and the rule of law that government fund those who cannot afford it to ensure their issues can be brought before the courts and to provide the means by which all individuals can aspire to hold government accountable to its constitutional obligations.
In the recent landmark case of Law v. Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada defined and clarified the purpose of equality guarantees set out in section 15 of the charter as involving two specific objectives.
As Justice Iacobucci stated:
In general terms, the purpose of s. 15(1) is to prevent the violation of essential human dignity and freedom through the imposition of disadvantage, stereotyping, or political or social prejudice, and to promote a society in which all persons enjoy equal recognition at law as human beings or as members of Canadian society, equally capable and equally deserving of concern, respect and consideration.
This second objective of promoting equality and promoting a society that fosters equal recognition of all members of our society clearly anticipates a positive commitment on the part of governments to ensure that these rights and principles are fully realized. The constitutional right to equality cannot be reduced to a notion of negative rights; that is, stopping instances of discrimination when they are about to happen. According to our Supreme Court's vision, it entails a positive and proactive commitment to promoting and advancing these rights.
The court challenges program illustrates this commitment as its very mandate characterizes this two-pronged objective through its role in supporting and enabling scholarship, debate, education, and dialogue on equality issues, as well as by sponsoring conferences, colloquia, and research publications on equality.
Some of the court case interventions supported by the court challenges program have had a profound impact on what substantive equality can and does mean for Canadians, notably, for example, on how courts have addressed the problem of systemic violence against women.
The program has provided funding for women's equality-seeking groups to work collaboratively to furnish analyses of historically entrenched discriminatory provisions of our criminal legal procedures, for example, such as myths and stereotypes about victims of sexual assault. Degrading stereotypes about women's lack of credibility have imbued rape laws and proceedings for centuries, and they have prevented women from reporting assaults and from pursuing criminal charges against the perpetrators.
For instance, through their intervention, women's groups had the opportunity in the 1999 case of Ewanchuk to challenge the reasoning of the Alberta Court of Appeal that how a woman dresses or whether she lives in a common-law relationship impugns a woman's character and credibility enough to support the acquittal of the accused on charges of sexual assault.
The funding has also been crucial in advancing arguments and analyses in the sexual assault case of Bishop Hubert O'Connor and the Mills case. They addressed whether or not and under what circumstances the medical and psychiatric records of rape complainants were to be made available to those accused of sexual assault for the purposes of questioning a complainant's credibility.
Such interventions have challenged long-standing assumptions and practices that concern the safety, security, and freedom of every girl and woman in this country. The ability to provide our courts, through interventions, with informed analyses derived from varying perspectives that lend themselves to a sophisticated and evolving understanding of substantive equality implications in such context is part of the legacy of the court challenges program of Canada. The support provided by this program is essential to ensuring that the courts continue to address violence against women as an equality issue.
As a concluding comment, when we are challenged with questions concerning the rights of minorities, and particularly those that endure the disdain and prejudice of the majority, we must keep in mind the intrinsic irony of constitutionalizing and hence protecting equality rights. As Professor Jennifer Nedelsky has noted:
...when we choose to treat a value, such as equality, as a constitutional right, we are in effect saying both that there is a deeply shared consensus about the importance of that value and that we think that value is at risk, that the same people who value it are likely to violate it through their ordinary political processes.
This is a fundamental consideration of constitutional equality rights, as they define the entitlements that make it possible for all members of society to flourish and to relate to each other in terms of equality in the face of the fact that we are vastly unequal in our needs, abilities, and status.
Individuals and groups, such as sexual minorities, that are most subjected to social prejudice, disdain, and hatred and who are most likely to be stripped of fundamental human rights are those who are in most urgent need of constitutional equality protections. Such protection must include fostering the services and programs that provide opportunities for dialogue and education about differing needs and circumstances, however much the majority would be loathe to accept them. This is a feature of our heritage—of this program, that is—of which many Canadians are proud. It is about respecting the dignity of all persons, including those we ourselves might question as to entitlement in granting them access to justice and to the protections and benefits of the law.
Thank you for your time.
:
When I say peripherally, I mean peripherally, and especially in some of the cases I think about in particular.
When I say peripherally, I mean I have been a member of an organization that puts together committees--to different organizations--to tackle specific issues. And those committees are always moving. So on your first question, for example, with respect to the political affiliation of the lawyers who may or may not be hired, the lawyers or legal experts who have been retained, for the most part, are not paid, and we're looking at really just covering some of the minimal costs. They are commissioned or retained on the basis of their expertise on a certain issue.
For us, that is, the National Association of Women and the Law and the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund...it is on their particular understanding, let's say, in criminal law or family law, or whatever area it happens to be, on the equality theory and analysis that is at stake in those issues. So it's always a different committee that is pulled together for the purposes of a particular challenge.
I want to talk to this broadly before specifically. I would like to think that on a moment-to-moment basis, if we look at whether we won this case, if there's a “we” to win it, because as a third-party intervention you don't have that stake in it, I think the record is no, there's been quite a trail of losses. That's because the perception is that organizations are somehow personally invested in the win or the loss. Where the win takes place, and this is my stake, is in the elaboration of the theory and approach to the principles of the law, such as substantive equality.
Canada is internationally recognized for our approach to equality, for our understanding that equality, for example, isn't about treating people the same, but about taking into account the different needs and circumstances and positioning in society. A great example would be the Eldridge case, where a pregnant woman who is hearing impaired goes to a hospital and does not have the benefit of access to medical services that all other women with the ability to hear have.
Getting the courts to participate in the collective and collaborative process of developing a nuanced and sophisticated understanding of equality is where, to me, the wins are, and I've been peripherally involved in cases that have taken a long approach to that struggle.
:
I think that's a really important question, because it gets to the heart of what I think this program is about in many ways, but also what our courts and legislatures have been grappling with for a really long time, the extent to which it has a commitment to equality.
I recognize that some people don't, that some people think equality is just not what they're into, and that's a different matter. But to the extent that we make that commitment, we recognize—and it's interesting in legal history watching the progressive recognition of what it takes, or what equality might mean, or what we might want it to mean—and to the extent that it's about just treating everybody the same....
No, I shouldn't start the sentence that way.
I think certainly our courts, or our Supreme Court of Canada, at least, has recognized that this is quite an impoverished understanding of equality. When we say that the program is about advancing some rights, I think then it's about advancing equality rights, and equality rights particularly as they are recognized as constitutional equality rights, not only in our country but internationally.
If I am permitted.... Okay, I won't go to that anecdote then.
What that commitment actually entails isn't just giving everybody the same thing, because nothing will change in our society to the extent that we do that. If we have half a table here that doesn't have access and wheelchairs in another half that do, and we give the exact same treatment, that half will still not be able to go to the next floor if we don't commit to getting elevators, for example.
That is what equality is really about; that is, making a commitment to those who are disadvantaged, not just to everybody. Of course, what that means is saying that there are some groups who are more deserving of certain resources, because what we want at the end of the day is for them to be able to get to the second floor, or be able to have access to health care benefits. That might mean providing more funds to those who happen to be hearing impaired, for example, or bound to wheelchairs, when they seek medical services.
There are many who would say, “But that's not fair. Why does that group get these resources”—let's say an interpreter—“and we don't?” That's where I think we have to step back from our own interests and say, that's because we're actually committed to what we call substantive equality now, and that is equality, at the end of the day, where those resources are actually available to everybody, not just what you give and what you distribute, but what's available, and what opportunities are there at the end of the day.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's our pleasure to be here.
REAL Women has been involved with the court challenges problem, or I would say uninvolved, because we have been excluded totally from it. We have tried for years to get some sort of funding and some sort of recognition. Because we're not ideologically in tune with the court challenges program, we have always been denied funding.
We have grave concerns about the operation of the organization. To us, it is an example of government corruption and taxpayer abuse. The program does not report to Parliament, nor does the Access to Information Act apply to it. The consequence of this is that the administrators of the program have been able to do whatever they like, whenever they like.
For example, the mandate says it must be for disadvantaged groups, it must be on legal merit, and it must be for equality. Those were never defined, so the administrators of the program have quite happily defined it to suit their own private interests. I can give you an example. I understand you have a copy of our brief. Page 2 gives you some examples of the funding. For example, in 1992, a Toronto Bay Street lawyer, Elizabeth Symes, who was one of the founders of the feminist legal arm called LEAF, received funding so she could get a tax deduction for her nanny. It's who you are and your connection to the feminist movement and other special interest groups that determines whether you get funding.
In 1995, the CCP gave $5,000 to a social worker in Saskatoon to see whether she could build a case to remove section 43 from the Criminal Code. Section 43 allows parents and teachers to discipline their children if it's reasonable under the circumstances. After she did her research for $5,000, the CCP then gave money for another special interest group to go through three levels of courts to try to remove section 43. REAL Women was without any funding. In order to protect parents, we had to go through the three courts without a penny from any other group.
A so-called disadvantaged group is CUPE, the Canadian Union of Public Employees. They're very wealthy, because of course they have compulsory union dues. They received money for two cases on which REAL Women had to intervene out of their own pockets, both of them dealing with homosexual benefits and rights. We were protecting traditional family, and of course we were ignored by the court challenges program.
We were particularly displeased by the fact that the court challenges program, since it began, has been funding a feminist group, LEAF, Legal and Education Action Fund, on the grounds that they were going to argue for the equality of women. Let me tell you, LEAF does not represent women; it represents a special interest group of feminists only. The point is that nobody can represent women. We're as diverse as men. Yet they have been funded by the CCP for over 140 cases. It's always allegedly on behalf of “women”, but in fact it's on behalf of a feminist ideology only.
I might say that NAWL, the former speaker, also does not represent women. For some of the cases she outlined...there's no way a majority of Canadian women will support their arguments before the court--one or two, yes, but the vast majority were extremist, feminist, ideological cases. It was using judicial fiat to get around Parliament, which should be dealing with the decisions. Instead, with CCP funding, radical feminists were in fact funded to do an end run around Parliament on many, many issues.
We've found there's no equality of access whatever to the CCP, and we're prime examples of it. For example, to call LEAF, which has 140 cases funded, a disadvantaged group is amazing. We've found under the Access to Information Act that between 1985 and 1989, LEAF received over $800,000 from the Status of Women. It received $1 million from Ian Scott, the then Attorney General of Ontario. It received over $900,000 between 1992 and 2002. Yet our organization, which is funded only by our members and donations, has a grand total budget of $120,000 a year. We are certainly disadvantaged, but we've never been able to break through the court challenges program because we're not ideologically in keeping with those administering the program.
The CCP is very discriminatory. In fact, it's so ironic that an organization that is supposed to support fairness and equality in Canada is truly one of the most discriminatory, unequal, and unfair agencies we have in the Canadian government today. Our organization is a prime example of one that has experienced straight-on discrimination from the CCP. On page 6 of our brief we give you examples of three cases where we applied and they told us our views did not support equality. But we have equality in our objects of incorporation. We have it in our name. REAL Women stands for realistic, equal, and active for life. We all believe in equality as women, but we don't have the feminists' interpretation of equality; therefore, we've suffered very bitterly from discrimination at the hands of this court challenges program.
Every time we've applied for grants we've been told that we don't support equality. It's always LEAF and other feminist organizations that get the funding because only they apparently understand equality. But other women, who are the vast majority, are totally ignored because we obviously are not informed.
I am a lawyer and I've been to court many times. REAL Women has intervened in the Supreme Court of Canada over the years approximately 12 times, funded out of our own pockets, on issues for which LEAF, NAWL, and the homosexual organizations have all been funded.
It is a concern to us that the court challenges program has been used as a way to change the social values of this country by funding only one side of an issue, and there is no broad openness to others. To have other groups, such as the woman who just spoke from NAWL, talk about equality of access is truly very offensive to those of us who have had to go to court and pay out of our own pockets.
The homosexual activists in Canada, Egale, said in their own newspaper on October 19, “No group has benefited more from Court Challenges funding than the queer community”, which the column thanks. It said that money from the court challenges program helped Egale win equal marriage rights through the courts in B.C., Ontario, and Quebec.
They have been funded, whereas REAL Women, struggling to protect the traditional understanding of mother, father, and children, have had to pay through the courts again. We've tried to protect traditional values. We've tried to protect the laws that Parliament and the legislatures have passed. These groups that do not agree with them have used the money to usurp the laws and have their own objectives and ideology take over our system of government.
It's significant to us that the traditional definition of family—defined as mother, father, and children—has been severely impacted by these cases, funded by the court challenges program. It is now beyond dispute that children thrive best in opposite-sex family environments, where they learn gender identity and sexual expectations from the biological parents. These children thrive best academically, financially, emotionally, psychologically, and behaviourally, and we've documented all that.
But instead, what has happened is that these extremist groups have used the courts with court challenge money to usurp what is a concern for children.
For example, France's National Assembly said in January 2006 that they cannot accept same-sex marriage because of the effect on children. In July 2006, the New York State Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., also rejected same-sex marriage.
But instead, you have the courts taking the lead in trying to tell us that it's adults' rights to totally ignore the rights of children. The question to be addressed is why does the Canadian court challenges program have a bias for feminists and homosexual cases? The answer is, and we've researched it very carefully, that members of the homosexual group Egale sit both on the board of directors and on the advisory board of the organization.
:
Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
But you have a conflict of interest. For example, the current executive director of the National Association of Women and the Law is a former executive director of the court challenges program. They're all intertwined and interlocked, administering funds to go only to their own groups. Again, on page 11 of our brief we give you a few examples of the intertwining that's going on between the advisory board, the board of directors, and also in the whole administration of the program.
In summary, the CPP, which is funded by the Canadian taxpayer, has been established to support unfairness and also discrimination in Canada. With a few exceptions, it has not advanced the rights of minorities and disadvantaged groups, but in fact it has advanced the interests of special interest groups, which are clearly not, with the enormous funding they receive from the government.
For example, in 2004-05, Egale received a grant from the Canadian heritage department for $21,000. What was that for? That was in addition to CPP funding.
The LEAF group has had hundreds of thousands of dollars, and NAWL receives $200,000 to $300,000 every year from the Status of Women. They're scarcely disadvantaged.
They go to court, and the courts are not prepared to handle these moral issues. As a lawyer, I know they do not. They do not have access to the research; they do not have access to all the social facts of a case. They hear only one side and they're not ready; it's either win or lose. They cannot compromise like Parliament can do. What has occurred with the court challenges program is simply wrong in principle and in result.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon, my name is John Carpay and I am the Executive Director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation. I learned French in Quebec, at Laval University, where I did my BA in political science. I also have a law degree from the University of Calgary.
Our organization has an interest in the Court Challenges Program because a man in British Columbia, whose name is James Robinson and who is the Chief of the Nisga'a band in northwestern BC, wanted to make use of this program. As members of Parliament, I am sure you know that in 2000, the Nisga'a Final Agreement Act was passed. It established a new government and a new constitution, as well as a new citizenship for the first nations peoples in northwestern British Columbia. With the assistance of our organization, James Robinson applied for funding, because he felt the agreement violated the equality rights set out in section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In 2003, the response from the Court Challenges Program was that it would not provide financial assistance to Mr. Robinson, because the program did not agree with Mr. Robinson's objective. In other words, the program did not share his vision of equality. I see here today a number of members of Parliament representing various parties. There are four parties in the House of Commons—in other words there are four visions of justice. Each party has its own definition of justice.
As you know, this is a subject that has been debated since Plato wrote The Republic. How do we define justice? What are the aspects of justice? The same is true of equality. There are a number of definitions of equality, not just a single vision of it.
Under the Court Challenges Program, taxpayers' money was paid to the feminist group LEAF, the Legal Education and Action Fund, which, in its definition of equality, advocates the constitutional right to social assistance, abortion, and a different definition of marriage. That is its right. We enjoy freedom of expression and the freedom to go to the courts to seek change, so as to take part in the political process. All that is well and good. However, is it fair that taxpayers' money is used to promote a single group's view of equality and that the same program rejects all other visions of equality? There are a number of different visions of justice and equality.
In a democracy, there are debates, including debates before the courts involving individuals who are equal. However, when the state provides taxpayers' money to help out just one group or just a few groups that share a single vision of equality, that is not fair. That is why I am hoping the government will stand by its decision not to use taxpayers' money to advocate and promote a single vision of equality.
Thank you.
:
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I thank you for allowing me to speak today.
I'm the president of Canada Christian College. We're a 40-year-old institution training workers for the church in the city of Toronto. We have approximately 1,200 students. We've graduated over 4,500 over the last 40 years, most of whom are serving congregations right across the country of Canada.
Some 80% of our students are visible minorities, while 90% of our students are actual minorities. These new Canadians who are part of our great country of Canada have somehow been excluded from the court challenges program. What is their sin that has caused them to lose their status in this program? The sin is that they are pro-family, that they are pro-religion, and that they just simply do not fit the ideology of the court challenges program. This program appears to say that all Canadians are equal; however, some are more equal than others. Some are worthy of funding, some are not worthy of funding. Somehow, our people have been found to be less equal, and this has been decided purely upon ideological lines.
This court challenges program was founded for the purpose of clarifying equality rights in this country of Canada. It was not founded for the purpose of advancement of special interest groups in this country. However, according to the review, the report of the program directors themselves, the report that they put forward in the year 2003 states that it is for the advancement of equality of rights. We do not believe this is the purpose for the court challenges program. Therefore, it should not be funded by a government that is committed to equality.
We, of course, as Canadians, and as religious Canadians, are committed to fairness. We're committed to equality. We are committed to fair treatment right across the board—not that some are more equal than others, not that some people are attempting to restrict rights and some are attempting to advance rights. This court challenges program is saying exactly that. Furthermore, it's doing so with great conflict of interest.
Think of this. The government pays Canadian citizens to sue the government. We are the only country on earth that pays our citizens to sue ourselves. This is a tremendous conflict of interest, and it should therefore not be funded.
There's a further conflict of interest, and you've heard it come up several times already today. The advisory group is made up of people who receive the funding. These people who gain access to millions of dollars are the very people advising the court challenges program of where to put the money—organizations like Women's Legal and Education Action Fund, with over 140 cases themselves; organizations like Egale and others that you've heard of. They are funding challenges to our legal system so that people like Robin Sharpe can put forward the idea of equality, in that he should be equal in this country as a child pornographer who creates child pornography. How disgusting it is that our government would fund such a challenge? Yet for those of us who are pro-family, when we go and say we do not want these rights to be given to Robin Sharpe, it is then declared that we are restricting rights and we are therefore not allowed to have any funding to intervene on behalf of Canadians across this country.
Who pays this bill? Not you, not Parliament, but the taxpayers of this country. They pay the bill of the millions of dollars every year that go to this program. But that is the tip of the iceberg. After the millions of dollars are seeded into the program, court challenges begin, many of them frivolous, and then the government has to put forward millions of dollars to lawyers to defend the government's position against these challenges that it's paying for.
The reality is that people like me—clergy members, teachers, parents, and children—do not have equality of rights in the court challenges program. However, people who want to attack the rights of those like us in this country appear to be more equal than others. This court challenges program has nothing to do with rights, but everything to do with advancing an ideological agenda in which we, as parents, somehow are not included.
We are people of fairness. We do believe in equality. We do believe in rights. But somehow the court challenges program does not believe in our rights. Therefore, we ask that the Government of Canada cancel the funding to this program.
Thank you very much.
:
Mr. Chairman, members of Parliament, thank you for the opportunity to bring forward for the record Canada Family Action Coalition's concerns and position about funding a program such as the court challenges program.
Let me first state that we agree with the position the government has taken in suspending the program. We'd ask to have it not reinstated. I'll provide some reasons why we'd like to see that.
There are three principles on which we believe a program such as CCP should not be funded with tax dollars. First, the very principle of section 15 of our charter, equality before the law and under the law, should and would require that all citizens in Canada be provided equal funding. A program that gives government funds, in fact tax dollars, to a non-profit organization so that the non-profit organization can then pick and choose who they wish to fund violates the very principle of equality. Funding for only some people or some groups creates an inequality of access to the law. Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in part reads, “equal benefit of the law without discrimination”. I would read that as equal benefit of the law without discrimination.
The CCP website states that one of its goals is to help disadvantaged groups prepare cases and file court actions against the government. So in essence, when in someone's opinion there appears to be a violation of some right, they will fund. The principle that they espouse to be one of the fundamental reasons for existing is equality, which they functionally do not deliver, I believe.
Some scholars have said that the dialogue in a court action is a dialogue between courts and the public. But when certain groups are funded, the dialogue really is not between courts and the public; it's between specific individuals and the courts.
Using tax dollars to create an advantage for a select few is a violation, in my estimation, of the charter. It's also an inappropriate way of resolving perceived disparities in the Constitution. We've seen a number of cases where government money has been spent for various reasons that I believe even the Auditor General has questioned.
Second, we do have concerns about how society resolves disparities, or perceived disparities, in the Constitution. If you review the cases that were funded by tax dollars, you will see that in most of those cases, I believe, those issues should have been resolved through dialogue with our elected Parliament, not with the power of one court imposing its unilateral view on all of us.
We are calling for an end to tax-sponsored court resolutions that prevent democratic function through Parliament. I would ask you to think about the stringent safeguards built into our Constitution for changing the Constitution. Why are they so stringent? To protect against a few people, elected or non-elected, from altering the law at the whim of someone or some group wanting some change. The amending formula holds that citizens--many of them, and in fact a majority--must be from various provinces, and they are people who are required to amend the Constitution. Yet some of the government's funding has encouraged certain groups to take actions and lobby through courts so that we can have that Constitution altered through court cases.
The third point I make is that if this or a similar program were to be reinstated, we would then ask this: who is qualified to determine the “disadvantaged” groups, as the CCP calls them? I see no great authority in the list of names on the CCP website. Does one of them or all of them have special qualifications to determine who meets the criteria for disadvantaged persons or groups? The equality advisory committee lists certain people, but from a very limited number of segments of society. Are these people duly qualified to decide which group gets taxpayers' dollars?
As I mentioned earlier, funding one side of a case but not another side of the same challenge creates, not resolves, inequality. I can name numerous disadvantaged people from my perspective: seniors, the handicapped, children, religious groups, left-handed people like me who can't find left-handed scissors, Ford owners, even citizens who are in Canada illegally. Would all of these people get funding for their challenges? Who decides who's disadvantaged?
The government has made the right and proper decision to stop funding the creation of inequality through this program. No one has a charter right or a guarantee to taxpayers' dollars. In fact, the attitude of entitlement to tax dollars has to be stopped.
As the Canada Family Action Coalition, we respectfully ask that you, the committee, recommend in your report that no funding of inequality-producing programs be given any longer.
Thank you.
:
And feminists, sorry. I forgot the feminists.
I'm more interested in following up with the gentlemen here—and I don't want to be seen as anti-feminist—because the gentlemen have spoken more on the issue of rights and how we pursue rights in a democratic society. I'm going to just go through a bit of a process here and ask you a question about it, because I think it is a very interesting question.
Mr. Carpay, you said that equality between various groups can only be accomplished at the expense of true equality before the law for individuals. I studied the briefs in detail beforehand, because I've thought a lot about this.
In my region, I have a very large francophone population. Now francophone language rights and school rights--minority rights--are guaranteed by the courts, but those rights were never enacted unless people.... I mean, the francophone community continually had to go to court. They always had to go to court. I've often heard the argument that these rights are coming at the expense of everybody else. No offence. I'm not trying to imply anything here, but the people who would say that to me were anti-French. They didn't mind French rights as long as they spoke French at home, but they certainly didn't want to have the French getting rights in court or in the schools or anywhere else. So these rights had to be fought for.
The other issue, in terms of giving one group rights that other groups don't have.... I was a Catholic school board trustee, and we in Ontario fought for the right to maintain Catholic school board rights. Those were minority guarantees, and it was not up to the democratic will of Parliament—in this case, Queen's Park—to take those rights away from us. Those were guaranteed, historic rights. We were willing to fight for them in court, time and time again, because we accepted that notion.
Now last week we had a delegate from a deaf organization who came before us. I've heard this program portrayed as frivolous and as undermining other rights, but if we follow the logic I'm hearing.... Mr. Rushfeldt, you basically asked why we don't fund people with left-handed scissors or who drive Ford cars. This man was fighting for the right to access basic rights as a deaf person that he would never be able to get anywhere, and he had to go to court because they would not give him those rights. So the question that he is somehow above everybody else is an issue that I think is really interesting.
The question I would see here is about having a program that gives government financial assistance to selected applicants. I myself have a deaf child. Taking this on the broad scale, we had to fight for special funding for our deaf child to have access. I remember one time when the teacher said he wasn't going to accommodate her, that it interrupted his teaching. He asked my daughter why she didn't look beyond herself. What about the 26 hearing kids? Didn't she ever think about them? I remember thinking at that time that his concept of rights.... Well, sure, she was one student who was interfering with classroom teaching, because the teacher didn't want to accommodate her. As long as a 14-year-old deaf child has to accommodate a $60,000-a-year teacher, how is she ever going to be on the same playing field as those other students?
I'm taking the issue of court challenges to the broader issue, which we're discussing, of individual rights, because all individual rights are not equal, because some people can't access those rights.
The viewpoint I'm hearing is certainly not a viewpoint I support or that the New Democratic Party would support. I'm sure you would already have figured that out. I don't know if my colleagues support it, but it definitely is a viewpoint that the Conservative Party seems to support, the notion of individual rights versus collective rights.
So my question is quite simple, having done this long roundabout. Would you feel that you have a much better ear for your viewpoint under the leadership of Stephen Harper, who is a former head of the National Citizens' Coalition, than you would from a party like ours or the Bloc Québécois or the Liberals?
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[English]
When the motion was put forward from the government to expand the list of people to hear from, I supported it. I believe it is worthwhile to listen to people who have different points of view. Because of that and similar things I've heard today and last Wednesday, I've given you notice, Mr. Chairman, that it would be very important for us to also hear from the court challenges program representatives themselves.
There have been many things said here today, questions asked, and some innuendo put on the table, so I'd like to hear from them. I'm giving notice that the motion is there so people are aware of it. If we're going to look into it, as we have with the presentations today, we should be willing to hear from them as well.
[Translation]
I am going to be talking about language rights. Mr. Angus raised the issue earlier, but I didn't hear the panellists' comments.
I am part of a linguistic minority in this country: I am a francophone who lives in Ontario. That has nothing to do with the Government of Canada or the fact that I am a member of Parliament. The Constitution recognizes linguistic rights, the right to education in one's mother tongue throughout the country, when numbers warrant, although it has happened that this right does not exist even where numbers do warrant, if we refer to section 133 of the Constitution Act.
Does your argument about equality also apply to the linguistic rights of the official language minorities in this country?