Federally funded court challenges program calls carbon tax a ‘human right’

Canada’s federal Court Challenges Program on Wednesday said it funded Supreme Court intervenors in support of the carbon tax in the name of “human rights.”

The program refused to say which pro-tax advocacy group received a taxpayers’ grant to speak in favour of the federal tax on fuel, per Blacklock’s Reporter.

“We will not be making additional information available,” said Pascale Castonguay, spokesperson for the program.

“As for your question about the eligibility of these funded matters, this is a determination that lies with the relevant expert panel.”

Castonguay referred reporters to a Program guide Who We Can Fund. The guide restricts grant applications to an individual or group “who assert human rights” and are “in need of financial support to proceed with the case,” it said.

“The Program provides financial support to assert human rights protected by the Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms,” said the guide.

The program in its latest Annual Report to Parliament disclosed for the first time which legal cases it funded. The document revealed grants were paid to applicants who were among 40 intervenors in a 2021 challenge of the carbon tax in the Supreme Court of Canada. It was the only time the Program subsidized intervenors to argue the government’s side in a tax case.

The Supreme Court by a 6-3 vote upheld the carbon tax as constitutional.

“I hope every citizen of this country will do his or her best to contribute,” Chief Justice Wagner later told reporters.

“What have you done?” asked a reporter.

“I try my best just like you do I’m sure,” replied Wagner.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resurrected the Court Challenges Program in 2017 after a previous Conservative cabinet disbanded it in 2006 as secretive and political.

“No one is able to tell me who got the money,” then-Attorney General Vic Toews testified at 2007 hearings of the Commons Government Operations Committee.

“I first asked who got the money years before I was even in the federal government,” said Toews.

“When I made those kinds of inquiries they said, ‘I’m sorry, we can’t tell you because it would violate solicitor-client privilege.’ That was the grossest abuse of solicitor-client privilege I had ever heard of in my life.”

“Not only did we not know who was getting the money because the group said they couldn’t tell us, but we didn’t know the criteria under which that money was spent.”

The program since 2017 spent $24.9 million on grants to litigants.