Ottawa think tank the Macdonald-Laurier Institute has found a taxpayer-funded Court Challenges Program subsidized liberal causes 96% percent of the time.
The Macdonald-Laurier Institute on Thursday said its analysis, the first of its kind, could not find a single instance where the program financed Charter challenges on conservative themes like property rights. per Blacklock's Reporter.
“We anticipated the ideological direction of the funding would often be unclear,” said the institute’s report, How Your Tax Dollars Fuel Social Justice Activism Through The Courts.
“We were wrong.” The program was “heavily biased,” it said.
“The Court Challenges Program has outlived its usefulness.”
“It is time to shut it down.”
A previous Conservative cabinet disbanded the program in 2006 on complaints it was secretive and political. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau revived it in 2017 with $24.9 million spent to date.
“Our report provides the first empirical account of who the Court Challenges Program funds,” wrote the institute.
“It confirms the program has a clear ideological bias.”
“Drawing from the program’s annual reports we find 96% of the Program's examples of funded human rights litigation aimed for a ‘progressive’ policy outcome with no funding for anything approximating a ‘conservative’ policy position.”
“In 2020 the chair of the program’s human rights panel called the program ‘a living example of social justice in action.’ We could not have said it better ourselves.”
“We did not identify a single example of Program funding that could be tied to anything approximating a conservative rights claim.”
Analysts identified one case rated politically neutral, a dispute over federal campaign financing regulations enforced by successive Liberal and Conservative cabinets.
“Program funded litigation is uniformly targeted towards the expansion of the Canadian state, an activist interpretation of the Charter, growth of federal government authority and judicialization of politics more broadly,” said the report.
Cases included appeals for health benefits for illegal immigrants and protection of “gender expression” in the Charter Of Rights And Freedoms.
“Examples of Program-funded litigation includes requesting additional refugee protection for two individuals after they had been found likely ‘to have committed crimes against humanity’ while part of Robert Mugabi’s Zimbabwe National Army.”
Managers have invoked solicitor-client privilege in refusing to name all litigants they subsidized. However the Program in its latest Annual Report to Parliament disclosed it paid intervenors who spoke in favour of the carbon tax at a 2021 Supreme Court of Canada hearing.
Using public funds to subsidize friends of the government in a tax case was “egregious,” said Macdonald-Laurier.