Thank you for your very clear message, Ms. Roy. You cited some specific examples of the progress and gains that have been made thanks to this program. The results of the program have helped support and strengthen francophone communities. In particular, it has enabled my community to access French-language education.
My next question is to Mr. Jensen.
We are in a committee where we've heard now from a number of witnesses—including you—about how critical this program has been. In fact, I first got involved in politics because of the fight for gay marriage, while recognizing the long struggle by Egale and other organizations to make gains, whether through the courts or in our Parliament, etc. We hear loud and clear to what extent the Court Challenges Program is critical to the work you do and to the struggle for justice when it comes to LGBTQ rights.
We're also in the context of a committee where we've heard from Mr. Brodie, who was former Prime Minister Harper's chief of staff when the Conservatives last decided to abolish the Court Challenges Program. I think it's a pretty clear indication that the current group of Conservatives would repeat the same mistakes Stephen Harper made.
I want to quote from his book, Friends of the Court, where he dismisses the Court Challenges Program, reducing its role to one of community outreach to encourage litigation and create new interest groups—as if communities standing up for themselves is just “community outreach”. He even describes how “the Charter has led...'unions, [common] native groups, [common] language minorities, gay and lesbian groups and others' to import American-style public interest litigation techniques into Canada.”
I find these comments profoundly disrespectful. They miss the point of what makes Canada unique and the way forward that we ought to be pursuing when it comes to justice. It's not “American-style politics” for communities to fight for their fundamental rights.
If we want a better example of importing American-style politics into Canada, I think we could look at the pro-billionaire, anti-LGBT, Islamophobic, anti-indigenous politics, and the policing of women's bodies, that we've seen from Trump and other right-wingers in the States. We're seeing so much of that among today's Conservatives here in Canada.
Bluntly speaking, the elimination of the Court Challenges Program set communities back in our country. It's clear what the Conservatives want. We need to enshrine this program. That's what this bill is all about.
What would the elimination of the Court Challenges Program mean for the communities Egale fights for?