Court Challenges Program Axed

[hamilton]

From www.thestar.com :

A slightly less `Just Society'

Oct. 2, 2006. 01:00 AM

CAROL GOAR

Recognizing that it was bigger, richer and stronger than anyone whose rights it might contravene, the government of Canada did a remarkable thing in 1978. It created the Court Challenges Program.

This allowed citizens to fight discriminatory treatment in the courts. It provided funding so they could hire a lawyer and present their case effectively. It gave Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which came along four years later, real teeth.

Human rights activists around the world praised Canada for its enlightened approach. Constitutional scholars applauded the government for offering disadvantaged minorities the opportunity to use the Charter. Women, individuals with disabilities, gays and lesbians, and people of colour felt they had a role in shaping the nation's values.

Naturally, there were naysayers. They regarded the program as a left-wing conspiracy, a waste of tax dollars and a sop to aggrieved interest groups.

But the new program took root and blossomed.

The naysayers are now in power. Last week, the government of Stephen Harper killed the Court Challenges Program.

It was one of the 63 spending cuts announced by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Treasury Board President John Baird.

The elimination of the groundbreaking program — axed once before by Brian Mulroney but reinstated by Jean Chrétien — won't make a significant difference to the government's bottom line. At a cost of $2.75 million a year, it represented approximately seven minutes' worth of federal spending.

But it will change the power balance in Ottawa.

Individuals or groups seeking to challenge legislation they consider unconstitutional — from the paternalistic Indian Act to restrictive security policies — will find it harder to mount a court case. There will be fewer equality judgments coming out of the Supreme Court. The majority view will prevail more often and more easily over the needs of vulnerable minorities. The so-called "Charter Era," in which fundamental rights were exercised, debated and defined, will fade into history.

David Baker, who specializes in disability law, was heartsick when he heard the news. He has used the Court Challenges Program to win sign language interpretation for deaf clients, to require VIA Rail to make its trains wheelchair accessible and to ensure that caregivers get fair pensions.

"I have a huge concern that these kinds of cases won't go forward now," he said.

Even if lawyers were willing to argue equality cases pro bono, he said, they'd still have to come up with tens of thousands of dollars to bring in expert witnesses and get technical documents. "That's asking more than a firm like mine could handle."

To Lorne Sossin, associate dean of law at the University of Toronto, the loss of the Court Challenges Program represents a weakening of one of the cornerstones of Canadian democracy.

"The courts were a place where people who might be excluded or left behind had a venue to be heard," he said. "Now, your seat at the table will be defined by your market power."

Sossin would have welcomed a public debate on the effectiveness of the 28-year-old program. But the government axed it without a word.

The setback came at a dispiriting time for human rights advocates.

In Ontario, low-income groups, people with disabilities and representatives of racial minorities are battling a government plan to strip the province's human rights commission of its power to investigate complaints and act as an advocate for citizens seeking justice.

The British Columbia government has already abolished its human rights commission, leaving residents to argue their case before a provincial tribunal.

The courts at all levels have become too expensive for many citizens. Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin warned, at this summer's meeting of the Canadian Bar Association, "our justice system is becoming less and less accessible to more and more Canadians. We cannot, I believe, allow this to continue."

And the Harper government is systematically excising programs designed to boost those with limited economic and political bargaining power. It has cancelled a five-year agreement between aboriginal leaders and first ministers to deliver help and hope to Canada's indigenous peoples. It has chopped funding for early learning and adult literacy. It is paring women's programs, youth employment initiatives and support for volunteerism.

The government's explanation: They weren't providing "good value for money."

That depends, of course, on what a nation values.

Canada once aspired to be a Just Society. Now, judging by the actions of its political leaders, it seeks to be a land where the strong, privileged and lucky get ahead.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Social Darwinism, pure and simple; they're just thinning out the gene pool. [color:purple]Who needs all those whiners anyway?

Seven minutes' worth of money....

[Birdy]

considering that it's a publicly funded program that neither lets the public know where the money is being spent or allows the public to know what criteria is used to select groups that it funds, i say it's ABOUT TIME.

social darwinism i don't think has anything to do with it.

and just to make an international comparison for good measure, imagine what $2.75 million could do in most parts of Africa.

7 minutes worth of federal spending

how high and mighty of you Carol Goar.

Edited October 2, 2006 by Guest

[ollie]

and just to make an international comparison for good measure, imagine what $2.75 million could do in most parts of Africa.

Right into the coffers of a corrupt dictator?

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Birdy, if someone has no money and the law is working against them, how are they supposed to protect themselves? If they can't, that is de facto a form of social Darwinism, because it lets the strong thrive while the poor sink.

And we don't need to imagine what $2.75 million could do in Africa, because a) economies of scale make that question endless (what do you say to debt cancellation? Or should Africans just get this self-reliance/libertarian thing going), and it was already doing all sorts of good things here.

[Hux]

and just to make an international comparison for good measure, imagine what $2.75 million could do in most parts of Africa.

Ollie is bang-on. Ooops, maybe I shouldn't agree with him, our conspiracy will be exposed!!!

That you would justify killing the court challenges program and use foreign aid to Africa as an example is so ridiculously ironic and philosophically inconsistent I can only laugh.

And the rationale you give for killing the program - that the public wasn't give enough info on where $ was spent:

a) could be used to justify killing pretty much any federal government program, with foreign aid spending being pretty much at the top of the list.

goes against the very essence of the program itself, ie. a tool to protect minority rights, if a majority of the general public had to see/approve of every single program we'd still have Japanese in iternment camps and slavery in the southern U.S.

Birdy you should be in the Republican Party.

Do you think if you born into poverty your perspective would be different?

[StoneMtn]

This is about "access to justice" and, across Canada, programmes directed at this have been slashed like crazy year after year.

There is no legal aid for civil litigation, which makes it impossible for the average or below-average income-earner to conduct a lawsuit, which essentially means that the party who can afford to litigate wins by default. There is inadequate funding for legal aid for criminal matters, which means that any low-income "accuseds" have to take whichever lawyer is willing to work really cheap, and it's a similar situation in family-law litigation (but worse) and those are the cases that also involve children, of course. We do have the Public Trustee and Guardian to watch out for the rights of children, but in my experience that is not the most effective system.

A slash like this one, and I use the following term in the truly legalistic sense ... fully sucks.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

And as far as access to gov't information goes, the Information Commissioner, John Reid, has been lamenting the Harper rollbacks for months.

If the Citizen didn't have a lock on the article, I'd pull up a piece about it from last week. Not much has changed, though, from the story last April - Accountability Act a "Bureaucrat's Dream"

Canada's information commissioner launched a scathing attack against Stephen Harper on Friday, charging that the prime minister has done a complete about-face on a promise to make government more accountable.

In a special report to Parliament, John Reid said he had "grave concerns" about the Conservative's proposed accountability act, which is now under debate. He charged that it will actually reduce openness in government and make it easier to cover up potentially embarrassing scandals.

Employing unusually strong language, Reid said the legislation "will not strengthen the accountability of government through transparency, it will weaken it.

"No previous government has put forward a more retrograde and dangerous set of proposals to change the Access to Information Act," he wrote. "The new government has done exactly the things for which its predecessor had been ridiculed."

Reid referred to the Chrétien government and the sponsorship scandal, and noted that the Harper's Conservatives campaigned on a platform of accountability in the recent federal election campaign.

Harper promised more accountability, but the proposed act will "reduce the amount of information available to the public, weaken the role of the information commissioner and increase the government's ability to cover-up wrongdoing, shield itself from embarrassment and control the flow of information to Canadians," he wrote.

[Birdy]

hux if you think i should be in the republican party you obviously have NO IDEA as to my politics. never, in a trillion years, would i vote Republican in the USA. EVER. I am socially liberal, but economically conservative.

ollie (no offense ollie ) is not bang on. not all of Africa is Uganda, nor does all humanitarian aid by way of money come into the hands of corrupt dictators. edit to add: i could never possess such a bleak outlook.

and as for the justication that i gave in killing this particular program, i only see it fit that the federal government discloses to it's citizens any and every group that is threatening the legitimacy of the Supreme Court of Canada and what their case may be. i would have absolutely NO PROBLEM at all if the spending of the court challenges program was disclosed. The fact that it is NOT only leaves me and a lot of Canadians to raise eyebrows and question whether specific interest groups were or are receiving preferential treatment at the expense of other interest groups. This is ONLY FAIR.

DEM - i respect what you are saying, but i'm arguing for accountability as I'm sure (even though most of you in this forum are picturing Mr. Harper with horns coming out of his head and will undoubtedly tie this into some sort of warped and backwards family values initiative) the CPC is as well. Not all of the CPC is socially conservative!!!

Edited October 2, 2006 by Guest

[ollie]

hux if you think i should be in the republican party you obviously have NO IDEA as to my politics. never, in a trillion years, would i vote Republican in the USA. EVER. I am socially liberal, but economically conservative.

This isn't a social issue?

[Birdy]

i'm not saying these groups should not receive funding, AT ALL. i'm arguing the fact that our government grants interest groups of it's choice money to challenge the top ranking court of our country without telling the citizens of Canada which particular interest groups it is helping. i, for one, would like to KNOW!

Edited October 2, 2006 by Guest

[Hux]

i only see it fit that the federal government discloses to it's citizens any and every group that is threatening the legitimacy of the Supreme Court of Canada and what their case may be.

Threatening the legitimacy of the Supreme Court?

WTF!?!?!

A healthy judicial system is one that is breathing and evolving as society advances, not one that is static and in which any challenges are viewed as a threat - yeeeesh, that is NOT a socially liberal view.

The fact that it is NOT only leaves me and a lot of Canadians to raise eyebrows and question whether specific interest groups were or are receiving preferential treatment at the expense of other interest groups. This is ONLY FAIR.

You see, this is where I call a spade a spade. A spade in this case is a hard-right libertarian view most common in the Republican Party and Reform Party wing of the CPC. (Which I beleive to be fundamentally un-Canadian as well)

The very fact that you identify minority communities as "interest groups" indicates your failure to indentify inequality and that some individuals and groups in Canadian society do not have equal access to the legal system, in your view it seems everyone is starting from an equal footing, and therefore you see assistance through this program as favourtism.

Wrong. There is a great deal of social and economic inequality in Canada (Stn Mtn's post and experience in that field is concrete proof that it exists in the legal system), the fact that you don't see that is crazy.

[The Chameleon]

Well this is par for the course for the current government.

How long until abortion is illegal, people are doing life for petty drug crimes and I can buy a gun at wallmart and bullets for pennies.

At this rate the next Canadian election will be decided by recount and when it gets close, after counting all those "hanging chads", a supreme court justice will "call off the recount", as to not delay the Canadian people [color:purple]democracy.

I'm getting ill typing this. Each day with this gov't is like someone turing a knife in a open wound.

"my only hope is that this gov't tables a budget, that gets a no confidence vote." Although I think that is a slim chance. Too bad. And even if it did happen by then the Conservatives would have dismantled the apparatus to remove them.

Uggh.

Edited October 2, 2006 by Guest

[Birdy]

i think my blood pressure just went up.

wrong, my ASS!

hux i've sat through this forum and have taken your personal insults with a grain of salt and shaken them off and really, ignored them. but fuck me... those days are over.

for someone who has never met me you certainly have a lot to say about who I am and what I believe in. Calling me "un-Canadian"? WTF is that! what a fucking insult. but wait! VOTE FOR HUX!!

i'm sorry if i wasn't as politically correct as others in my thread above, but don't for one second paint me as some right wing shmuck.. that's bullshit. "my point of view", you have no idea as to my point of view! I REPEAT, i would have no problem with this program if the particular "MINORITY COMMUNITIES" were identified, but they are not. How the hell does me asking what groups the federal government is assisting with tax payer money make ME unable to "identify inequality". What a fucking slap in the face. SERIOUSLY.

Obviously you have no idea that MOST libertarian thinkers actually vote for the FUCKING NDP in this country.

[hamilton]

I REPEAT, i would have no problem with this program if the particular "MINORITY COMMUNITIES" were identified, but they are not. How the hell does me asking what groups the federal government is assisting with tax payer money make ME unable to "identify inequality".

With all due respect, does not knowing which "groups" are receiving support qualify as enough of a reason for cancelling the program?

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I'm reminded of people from George Sorel (see The Myth of the General Strike) to Niklas Luhmann who point out repeatedly how political orientation is a psychological mechanism for reducing complexity while driving people into opposing camps. Chill, folks!

That said,

I REPEAT, i would have no problem with this program if the particular "MINORITY COMMUNITIES" were identified, but they are not.

There is no "community" of the impoverished, and hence no "special" interests. They come from everywhere, and the only thing that makes them similar is their lack of money. It's a bit like saying there a community of people with brown hair.

[The Chameleon]

I'm reminded of people from George Sorel (see The Myth of the General Strike) to Niklas Luhmann who point out repeatedly how political orientation is a psychological mechanism for reducing complexity while driving people into opposing camps. Chill, folks!

[color:red]Here, Here! Well said! I second that notion!

Edited October 2, 2006 by Guest

[Birdy]

i've chilled. i left for lunch and subsequently my blood pressure has dropped back down to more normal-like levels.

DEM - i was only merely using the terminology handed down to me from above and therefore, a more appropriate quote for your post would be this

The very fact that you identify minority communities as "interest groups" indicates your failure to indentify inequality..

thanks.

hamilton - in light of those peoples who have applied and don't receive grants or monetary aid and do desperately need it, i think it's far time the government took a good solid look at this program. perhaps cancelling it was the wrong thing, but a serious rejigging was needed. i have no idea why it is shrouded in a cloak of secrecy, but if it weren't, i'd be all for it. i want to know the criteria that is used to say NO to someone who needs help and YES to someone else in the same boat. why any of you would not want to know this kind of mind boggles me.

[Hux]

you have no idea as to my point of view!

Um...you should scroll back through the archives of this forum, for months you have laid out a great deal of your "point of view" on a wide range of issues, (safe injection sites, social programs, taxes, and now legal aid for minority interests) that have definitely been noticed by people who post and many who don't. They're generally pretty strong views.

I'd say we have a pretty good idea of where you're coming from. Seriously, read back a little.

I'd really like to hear your response to hamilton as well.

Also, can you explain what would attract a staunch libertarian to the NDP? That's one I've never heard.

It would honestly be great to meet you and discuss this stuff, it would be less frustrating for both of us, as you could toss a drink at me if you think I'm being a dick, and I could maybe pry answers where you would otherwise go off on a tangent or ignore a counter-point, that often happens in here.

[hamilton]

hamilton - in light of those peoples who have applied and don't receive grants or monetary aid and do desperately need it, i think it's far time the government took a good solid look at this program. perhaps cancelling it was the wrong thing, but a serious rejigging was needed. i have no idea why it is shrouded in a cloak of secrecy, but if it weren't, i'd be all for it. i want to know the criteria that is used to say NO to someone who needs help and YES to someone else in the same boat. why any of you would not want to know this kind of mind boggles me.

Groovy. I can totally agree that no matter what the program, or by which government it was enacted, that there needs to be full transparency. I just think that cancelling the program is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater - especially considering that the NCC lost a case - launched by Harper himself - due to Democracy Watch's use of these funds. See the Supreme Court's decision on Harper vs. Canada (I'm not making that up) regarding the spending limits for "special interest groups" (namely the NCC) during elections.

Edited October 2, 2006 by Guest
faulty url

[Birdy]

you have no idea as to my point of view!

Um...you should scroll back through the archives of this forum, for months you have laid out a great deal of your "point of view" on a wide range of issues, (safe injection sites, social programs, taxes, and now legal aid for minority interests) that have definitely been noticed by people who post and many who don't. They're generally pretty strong views.

I'd say we have a pretty good idea of where you're coming from. Seriously, read back a little.

I'd really like to hear your response to hamilton as well.

Also, can you explain what would attract a staunch libertarian to the NDP? That's one I've never heard.

It would honestly be great to meet you and discuss this stuff, it would be less frustrating for both of us, as you could toss a drink at me if you think I'm being a dick, and I could maybe pry answers where you would otherwise go off on a tangent or ignore a counter-point, that often happens in here.

hux, for someone who can dig up my past posts, why do you paint me as a republican? re-read that safe injection site thread and take a good look at where i go off saying that i'm all for drug legalization. do you really think a HARD RIGHT WINGER/ REPUBLICAN would say such a thing? legalize hard drugs? c'mon! for someone such as myself who fucking despises George Bush it's a little hard for me to swallow that shit without saying something to you.

a lot of the time i don't respond to what you consider counter-points, because i really don't consider them 'points' at all. if there is ever really something you feel like needs to be adressed, call me out on it and i'll respond. i don't ever intentionally evade anything that i think belongs in an argument.

more than ever i'd appreciate an attempt at understanding what being socially liberal, yet economically conservative is really all about. typing out that i am unable to indentify inequality is crap and assuming that i'm against social assistance is crap too. i honestly have no doubt as to your intelligence, and a lot of the time i think your posts are intended to get a rise out of people (you are a politician), but sometimes i just tire of being painted as the person that you tend to paint me as. I'm soooooo far from that person. maybe we can cough this up to the boundaries of internet forums.

as for libertarians voting NDP it's about two things mainly and a third kind of:

1. social liberalism

2. accountability

and

3. fear of social conservatism

you will never meet a self-professed libertarian who favours legislation against same-sex marriage or abortion or what have you. and FYI - up until this election i have cast votes the NDP way and the Liberal way. How very "republican" of me.

But really thanks for this response. It would be much easier to debate this stuff in person as points of view can be explained and inconsistencies cleared up. Plus it would be fucking awesome to throw a drink in your face at some point! haha.

cheers.

[Birdy]

hamilton, i will say cancelling it wasn't the best idea.... but leaving things as they are, isn't either. change is needed. had no idea about that case, btw!

[ollie]

I would just like to say that libertarians should vote for the Libertarian Party of Canada and not the NDP, Liberals, CPC, etc.

[ollie]

hamilton, i will say cancelling it wasn't the best idea.... but leaving things as they are, isn't either. change is needed. had no idea about that case, btw!

Ok, neither are best but which one is BETTER?

[Hux]

hamilton, i will say cancelling it wasn't the best idea.... but leaving things as they are, isn't either. change is needed

So you've admitted your opinion has changed from the beginning of this discussion. This is progress.

I think you have to recognize the way you came out swinging at the beginning of this discussion, defending the killing of this program saying first it threatened the legitimacy of the Supreme Court (?), then this very dubious statement:

The fact that it is NOT only leaves me and a lot of Canadians to raise eyebrows and question whether specific interest groups were or are receiving preferential treatment at the expense of other interest groups. This is ONLY FAIR.

This statement (seemed!) to speak to a certain view about equality in our society, and seemed to indicate your view that no groups deserve the special treament that this program provided - which set off a few alarm bells, not just from me. Hard to argue such a view is not right wing (libertarianism and conservativism share a lot)

The CPC may say they cut the program as it wasn’t transparent enough, and you seem to agree, but it’s been widely reported that this cut was generally about principle/morals, namely that the CPC leadership is opposed to many of the legal changes this program has enabled, ie. Advancement of minority rights such as the fight for same-sex equality, language issues, first nations, etc.

You may not be socially conservative, but you’re giving these guys a free pass if you think it was truly done because of lack of transparency.

The Prime Minister and most of his Cabinet are social conservatives (Ref-oooorm!), each of them has a public record and it’s clear where a vast majority of them stand on these kind of issues.

This is probably the first real conservative government this country has ever had. Mulroney….not even close.