Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The department took a look at this issue during consultations on the bill. We are quite strongly of the view that this would not work. The legal services program primarily assists people charged with criminal offences and people with pressing family issues. These are matters that address pressing social needs and they relate to matters heard in court.

The human rights program under the bill sets up a scheme to help complainants through a complaints process. A significant amount of resource will likely be allocated to this program, and we are reluctant to support an additional load on legal aid resources for a particular kind of matter that will already be resourced in another way.

This could also confuse the mandate of the legal services board and could affect our federal funding arrangement.