Episode 124: Subsidized Childcare for Refugee CLAIMANTS? Plus, the chances & effects of Alberta separation.

0:00Hello and welcome to episode 124 of Not Reserving Judgment, a podcast about the latest intrigues, triumphs, and outrageous in Canadian Constitutional Law. I'm Alexander Surgeon or Council with the Canadian Constitution Foundation, and today I have the challenge and pleasure of doing my best Josh Dahaz impression as I fill his shoes on this week's episode of the podcast. I'm Christine Bandai and I'm the CCF's interim executive director, and in today's episode I'm going to tell you about a recent decision from the Supreme Court of Canada where the court for a whole bunch of different reasons found that it is unconstitutional for Quebec to require irregular border crossers to first have the refugee status determined before they can get certain state benefits. And of course as always we will share our bad legal takes of the week. And so without further ado, let's get to those news headlines.

1:00I myself, I'd like to begin today by looking at the latest out of Alberta. And so Christine, by way of a quick little preface, the story I want to discuss is yet another at the crossroads of politics and constitutional law. What interests me is not really the policy preferences of the different players involved, but the questions that the situation raises. It goes a little like this. About 10 days ago on Enoch First Nation outside of Edmonton, this was on February 28th. The assembly of treaty chiefs of Treaty 6, 7 and 8 had an internal unanimous vote of non-confidence in Premier Danielle Smith's majority government. Now to be clear, this was not a non-confidence vote in the ordinary sense, but instead an internal vote of the assembly of the treaty chiefs with the ultimate goal being a vote in the provincial legislature. And the chiefs and the First Nations that they represent expressed frustration at what

2:00they believe to be poor communication, support and cooperation with the provincial government. According to the chiefs, the relationship between the First Nations and the provincial government has been strained for about a year now. They feel that the government hasn't been honoring its various treaty obligations. And so the ongoing and open discussion of Alberta separation was for them, they say, the final straw. And so fast forward to just yesterday, more than a dozen First Nations chiefs gathered in Edmonton at the provincial legislature in the hopes of moving forward with an actual non-confidence vote there on the Chamber floor. And it was the leader of the opposition, the NDP opposition in Alberta, Nahid Nenshi, who brought the motion forward that non-confidence motion, but it was quickly stopped by the majority. Now what follows is kind of an interesting characterization from both sides. The move was described by the government house leader, Mr. Joseph Sho, or Sho, I hope

3:02I'm pronouncing that correctly, as a quote, political stunt. And it seems that he took issue with the chiefs position. And regarded the First Nations push for a non-confidence vote as tantamount to a denial of Albertans policy preferences. And I'll explain what I mean when I say that and really what I think is at stake here. So Mr. Sho's particular words, which he did not minst, were quote, who do you think you are to say Albertans don't have a right to have their voice heard? End quote. Now again, I'm not here to comment on policy preferences of the various parties. Instead what I'm intrigued about is the sort of central issue at heart, which is I think a kind of ironic one. And so what do I mean by that? Well, on the one hand, here we are and here we have these chiefs making their own internal vote, holding their own internal vote on February 28th. And that can be said, of course, to be to the advantage of or in advance of the interests

4:05of their constituents. I mean, that's who they represent after all the various First Nations. So of course, on the other hand, a non-confidence vote against a majority government could be said to be an attack on the preferences of the voters who chose that government. And as is so often the case, it depends on the perspective that one has and that one brings. Intriguingly though, some of the First Nations are taking up legal challenges against the provincial legislation that permits citizen-led petitions, like the petition currently being circulated about Alberta's possible separation from Canada. And when I say citizen-led, I just mean to distinguish a petition from a referendum that the government itself takes up. This is something that a private citizen has really spearheaded. So ultimately, I think this is a neat example of the interplay between participation and opposition and how they are so often complimentary. Better, I think, to have many voices clamoring than a kind of monolithic situation where it's

5:09just a space with no competing interests or healthy debate. Indeed, the situation in Edmonton yesterday, and I'm sure in the weeks and months to come, will be one in which different interests are articulated in different ways. For example, one of the chiefs, Kelsey Jacko, said just yesterday that it was expected that the non-confidence motion would fail and to paraphrase that the goal really was to highlight what they deemed to be an important issue. Again, I'm a fan of direct participation, including that sort, symbolic participation. Now, the chiefs' concerns are that in the unlikely event of Alberta's separation from confederation, the status of Indigenous Albertans becomes uncertain. And the chiefs were clear on this point, they stated that their relationship is primarily one with the Crown. I read as well, Christine, that some of the First Nations leaders actually travel to England where they will have or have had an audience with King Charles. Again, if they haven't already, it's certainly on the agenda.

6:10So what we have there is quite literally a meeting and discussion with the Crown. Separation from confederation in the Alberta context or really any other province for that matter would, of course, raise all sorts of questions, including those about the status of the rights of the Indigenous peoples, rights that were acknowledged, affirmed and negotiated with the Crown. So the constitutional question here among many, but the central question is what happens if Alberta separates, excuse me, what happens if they succeed in separating and no longer has any connection whatsoever with the Crown or might they? So ultimately, what I'm trying to point out, what I found so interesting about these latest developments is that I think the unique character of the Indigenous peoples in confederation across the country raises certain questions that I think are relevant to all Canadians, including non-Indigenous Canadians, the questions being, you know, with whom, with which entity,

7:11do Canadians have a constitutional bargain? In any event, I think the situation in Edmonton is an excellent survey or crash course about just how multifaceted our constitutional framework is at the local level, provincial and, of course, across the country. You know, here in this case, we have some groups organizing to oppose the organization of others. And always looming in the background are these questions about the province, the federal government, the constitutional bargain, and, you know, Buckingham Palace itself playing a bit of a, a bit part in all of this. So, you know, my question for you, Christine, is have you given that, that angle some thought about these national and federal matters and what happens to them when, when one province goes its own way or tries to? So curious to know what you, what do you think about that? Yeah, so first I want to say, I think that Alberta separatism is highly unlikely scenario.

8:14I don't think that there will be an Alberta separation. Now, I'm sure I'm going to get some mail about that from people who support that. I'm just saying, I think if I were going to bet, if I had, you know, $5 and I was a betting woman, I would bet that they don't separate. So, we're talking about this in a hypothetical scenario. I think it's a very unlikely scenario. That said, okay, what if it does happen? Well, I think that perhaps by analogy, the Sessession Reference would apply, that's a Supreme Court decision from 1998. And I think that using that analogy, Indigenous peoples would be treated as a negotiating party because their rights are constitutionally protected. I also think that, you know, it is true what you pointed out that the relationship between Treaty 6, 7 and 8 is with the Crown, the Federal Crown. The provinces were not a party to those treaties.

9:16So that I think heightens the obligation to negotiate, especially since the Constitution Act 1982 recognizes and affirms Aboriginal Treaty rights in Section 35. So it's not like those rights disappear at the same time. They don't automatically transfer to Alberta. So there's a few different possibilities like perhaps there could be enclaves within Alberta that remain a part of Canada for these Indigenous territories. Or these territories could negotiate their own relationship with Alberta. They might even use that to assert greater autonomy and sovereignty within independent Alberta. But I also would like to just raise the idea that typically when, you know, we have the

10:19Sessession Reference. We have the rule of law in this country. We have a formula for how this is supposed to work. But when you look through history at states that have separated, once you've separated, you don't really care about the Constitution of the other country. You don't, it doesn't matter to you anymore. So I think that there is a risk for Indigenous people in Alberta who don't support separation like those people would exist and that the new Alberta might not, might come to its own conclusions about what that population's entitled to and might not honor commitments that were made by the federal crown because why on earth would a new state care about what an old state, a different state had negotiated. These are people within their own territory. And that comment is just based on the practical reality of how states across the world throughout

11:23history have dealt with splintering off. They just don't care about what the other state did or does. So really interesting theoretical, hypothetical conversation that I think is almost certainly never going to be really relevant. I'm going to turn now to my news headline, which is about a recent Supreme Court case called Quebec and Bijou Kenyenda. This is a case that deals with subsidized child care for refugee claimants in Quebec. And the court was asked to decide whether excluding refugee claimants from subsidized child care is discriminatory and if so, whether that discrimination can be justified under section one in the charter. And I want to be clear, this involves refugee claimants, so people who have crossed the border into Canada, and who have asserted refugee status, but whose claim has not yet been determined. So they might be refugees or they might not be. And the case was brought by a woman named Bijou Kenyenda and Miss Kenyenda had entered

12:27Quebec via the United States at Roxham Road with her three young children. And she had originally come from the Democratic Republic of Congo. And she claimed refugee status in Canada. And she had to wait for her refugee claim while she was waiting for that claim to be processed. She obtained a work permit. And she also tried to get subsidized child care so that she had someone to take care of her children while she worked because she did not have a husband with her. So she was denied access to those subsidized spots because Quebec has a policy that limits those spots, those subsidized child care spots to certain categories of people, permanent residents, Canadian citizens, but does not, and refugees, but it does not include refugee claimants, people whose status hasn't been determined yet. So the claim is about whether or not you can, whether or not it's discriminatory to deny

13:33access before that claim is adjudicated. And look, the government wanted to restrict access to those, only those categories, you know, citizens, PRs, actual refugees. Because as we know, you know, refugee status, it gets denied sometimes. Sometimes you will make illegitimate or false claims of refugee status. Now that wasn't the case for Miss Kenyenda, ultimately she did get her status. It just took her two and a half years, but the government as a broader policy wanted to ensure that only legitimate claimants, legitimate real refugees could access this program. And the reason is the program is expensive. It's over subscribed. It costs a fortune of taxpayer money to run. And there are tens of thousands of people on the wait lists for these spots. So they wanted to put guardrails on the program to ensure people accessing it were actually

14:34deserving. And look, ultimately Miss Kenyenda did get her refugee status. But the question is, before she got that status, was she entitled to a spot while she waited and was the denial of that spot, a violation of the constitution? And look, that might sound a little strange. And look, I do think it's strange. But this is not a pure positive rights claim per se the way we've seen other cases that I think are more purely positive rights, like bike lanes, a claim for a constitutional right to a bike lane or the claim to a particular climate change target. Those are more positive rights. This is in the realm of positive rights, but the claim is more that if Quebec provides a service, Kenyenda says it can't provide it in a way that's discriminatory. So the question is whether or not this was discriminatory. And we intervened in the case to argue for a higher standard of evidence and the majority

15:35typically requires. Basically our position is at section 15 equality jurisprudence is a huge mess. It's a mess in part because of a 2020 decision called Frazier. So section 15 of the charter guarantees the right to equal protection and benefit of the law without discrimination and discrimination on the basis of certain categories and then analogous categories. So the case law has developed a two part test, which at first asked, does the law create a distinction based on an enumerated ground or an analogous ground? So things like sex, race, religion. And then the second question is does the distinction create a disadvantage by reinforcing perpetuating or exacerbating disadvantages? And Miss Kenyenda claimed that the policy is neutral on its face. It says just no access to these child care spots unless you are found to be a refugee.

16:35But she said it's discriminatory in its effect because it has a disproportionate impact on women because women are more likely to be the providers of child care. And she relied on Frazier to make this argument. But there is another case, a more recent case called Sharma. And those cases, Frazier and Sharma are in some tension. So in Frazier, the first stage requires the claimant to show that the law has this, it's on its face creating a distinction based on an enumerate or analogous ground. And then to establish an adverse defect distinction, which is a second ground, that it creates a disadvantage by reinforcing or perpetuating or exacerbating a disadvantage, the claimant needs to show that the law has a disproportionate impact on a group. And they have two kinds of evidence that are helpful. Evidence of the situation of the claimant group and evidence of the practical outcomes

17:39of the law. And the Supreme Court in Frazier clarified that under this branch, they don't need to, claimants don't need to show that the legislature intended to create a distinction just that the protected characteristic caused them a disproportionate impact or that all members of the group are affected in the same way. But in Sharma, the Supreme Court majority replicated the overarching first stage of the Section 15 test, but they departed from or clarified, I guess depending on who you asked, Frazier, by altering the evidentiary burden required to establish adverse effect discrimination. In Sharma, the court said that claimants are required to show that the law creates or contributes to the disproportionate impact. So the law needs to actually be doing something you can't just make this assertion. So we intervene in the case to argue about the evidence and the comparable groups and what

18:41evidence can be admitted in Section 15 litigation. So that's kind of like the legal background and the factual background of the case, including what we argued and why we wanted to be there. Now let's get to what actually happened in the case. It was an eight to one decision in favor of Ms. Kenynda. Our argument on the evidence was unsuccessful. The court, the majority found that no specific form of evidence is required to prove that a group faces discrimination. And the majority agreed with Ms. Kenynda that the Quebec daycare screen violates Section 15 of the charter. Justice Cara Katzana wrote for the majority or for the largest concurrence that the Quebec scheme created a distinction on the basis of sex, which is a prohibited ground of discrimination. But rather than fostering a distinction between men and women, she asserted that the scheme discriminated between men and women refugee claimants, either though neither group was

19:41eligible for benefits at all. Because Quebec's exclusion of refugee claimants worsened the economic disadvantage of female claimants. So it constituted discrimination. And Cara Katzana endorsed an intersectional approach to overlapping classes upon which a person can be discriminated against. Now as I mentioned, there were concurrences. There was a concurrence by row, but I'm going to talk about the concurrence by the Chief Justice Wagner. And he took things in a different direction. He argued that the program violated Section 15 because refugee status is its own new analogous ground that we can use to find discrimination. And to me, this is just like absurd reasoning. First of all, we need to be really careful about finding new analogous grounds. The grounds on which we find discrimination are supposed to be what we call immutable characteristics. Immutable characteristics are things that you either literally cannot change about yourself.

20:43Things like race, age, sex, things you just can't change. Or things that can only be changed at enormous cost of your fundamental identity and dignity. So things like your religion, I mean, technically you can change your religion, but it comes at a cost to your fundamental identity. And likewise for sexual orientation would be an immutable characteristic. I mean, you could try to change your sexual orientation, but it would come at great cost to your identity and likely your dignity. And I just don't think being a refugee is one is the same thing. In fact, I think being a refugee is one of the most mutable things I can imagine. You can be a refugee one day and then you stop being a refugee. In fact, the goal for most refugees is to stop being a refugee. I live in Toronto. I'm good friends with many people who were refugees and they would never describe themselves

21:44as refugees as their core identity. And every single one of them worked actively to stop being a refugee. They worked towards being a citizen. They do not want to be seen as like refugees is my immutable characteristic that I can never change and it would cost me my dignity to change it. No, they feel the opposite. I encourage any of you listening to go and talk to a refugee, including to the Chief Justice Wagner, because it's honestly, it sounds like he's never spoken to a refugee before. If this is what he thinks is an immutable characteristic. So the decision, though, the majority is going to have a lot of, there are going to be a lot of repercussions. Governments are now going to need to consider providing all social programs at equal levels to anyone, including asylum seekers, unless they're willing to use the notwithstanding clause to block that. And it's worth noting that in Alberta, there is right now a referendum question about whether

22:49or not provincially funded programs like healthcare, education, and social services should only be available to citizens, permanent residents, and people with Alberta approved immigration status. So I can immediately see that if that referendum question is passed as a law in Alberta, of course, it's going to be struck down under the Kenyana reasoning as unconstitutional discrimination. It would be prohibited under the reasoning in Kenyana. And there's a great column in the National Post today by Carrie Sun that outlines some of the same concerns that I have. So Carrie writes, brought to its logical conclusions, the court's approach, imperils all manner of government schemes that restrict benefits by immigration status. According to its reasoning, if a law worsens the disadvantage of refugee claimants who are also female, or who are of a certain race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, or other protected ground, then the law might be deemed discriminatory. And Carrie writes, the expansion of judicial power, stymies, the exercise of political

23:50authority undermining the ability of governments to enact measures that rely on reasoned distinctions to advance the common good. And the ramifications of Kenyenda, of course, will extend beyond refugee claimants. It implies that anyone who's excluded from any benefit scheme could assert a constitutional violation so long as the scheme imposes greater burdens on excluded persons who have protected characteristics like sex or race than on other excluded persons. So this could apply to charging higher tuition fees to international students. That could be discrimination. Now there's a dissent, I noted, by Justice Cote. Interestingly, Cote points out some of the concerns that actually led us to want to intervene in the first place. And that concern is that if any guardrails on a government program make it unconstitutional discrimination, governments might simply stop offering programs. And Cote notes this explicitly.

24:52She says that the reasoning of a caracats honest in this decision could quote paradoxically discourage initiatives aimed at reducing inequalities because the charter would then impose a sort of all or nothing burden. So if no group can be lawfully excluded from a benefit, then the result may very well be that no one receives benefits at all. Now there might be some accelerationists listening to this who might just say, oh, that perfect. Just make more bad law and make it more and more extreme so the entire system collapses and then no one has any benefits when we have to rebuild. That is not what I want. I'm not an accelerationist. I can see some people listening to this and reaching that conclusion. So in all, I think that this case gave the court the option to choose between Frazier and Sharma, which direction they were going to go. It picked Frazier and it made Frazier worse with this intersectionality analysis. And as I mentioned, I think this is just an open door invitation on provinces to use

25:53the notwithstanding clause, especially when it's case out of Quebec and related to an issue currently on the ballot in Alberta. And both of those provinces already showed that they don't have any reservations about using the notwithstanding clause. So Alex, what do you think? Do you think that Alberta noticed this decision? Do you think that it's going to have an impact on the willingness of provinces to use the notwithstanding clause or maybe you're a closet accelerationist and you like this kind of thing? No, it's a great series of questions, Christine, and what I have to say right off the hop is that I'm always a fan of what Carrie has to say. She did a great job and those comments were, I think, right on the money. And did Alberta notice? I think it would be impossible for them not to have noticed. And I think your comments are perfectly good and saved any better myself.

26:55I think that the issue with the reasoning is that, and this is something I've thought about for a very long time, is life is unfair and we don't want to, I am not an accelerationist, I'm not interested in having our system collapse, sometimes part of a robust law is that decisions don't necessarily go the most logical way and there are downstream effects that sometimes are bizarre and sometimes absurd to, I think, use your word from earlier. And so given the choice between letting it all burn down and just litigating it and fighting it in the way that Carrie talks about where we can have well-reasoned distinctions and figure out what those actually are, I think that's the way to go. And so, of course, I think that Section 33 is going to have, there's going to be a field

27:57day now because the slippery slope there, and she didn't use this, co-tay didn't use these words, but that really is what it brings to mind for me, is that if all it takes is for there to be a sort of worsening of an already unfortunate situation for someone who has a sort of enumerated grounds, then where does it end, right, and that's the concern. The reality is, as I said just two minutes ago, that you could go on forever when it comes to disproportionate impact, right, and that's the danger. So it'll be very interesting to see what happens now. I like the way you put it, I think that the Sharma approach is the more logical one where we actually need to see a bit of a cause and effect and not just speculate out of, and make things up at a whole cloth. So it's going to be, it'll be, the ripple effect will be, I think, quite immediate and widespread. Yeah, I mean, I just feel like the jurisprudence on Section 15 just gets worse and worse with

29:02every layer of decision that comes out of the Supreme Court. We don't have a break this week, so I'll just remind everyone to please subscribe to the podcast, and if you like listening to it, share it with someone else who you think might enjoy it, because that's how a lot of people learn about it from personal recommendations. So thanks so much for supporting, and now I'm going to move to my bad legal take this week. And my bad legal take this week goes to the British Columbia government, and honestly, the case that the stuff I'm talking about today is making me depressed about the state of the law in Canada, because things just keep getting worse with the things that are coming out of both the legislatures and the courts. So this is related to an issue we work on a lot at the CCF and its bubble zones. So this week, the BC government announced plans for their own provincial bubble zones, and they're planning legislation that bans protests near schools or strengthens legislation

30:03that bans protests near schools, and now they're going to be banning protests near places of worship. But we don't know the details yet, so I guess maybe I'm getting worked up preemptively. Maybe it will just be a restatement of existing law that you can't criminally intimidate or harass people. So that wouldn't be too bad, it's just redundant. But I've got a really bad feeling, because these bubble zones have been expanding dramatically in recent years, beginning in 2020. Before 2020, bubble zone laws were really just limited to abortion clinics. Now we have bubble zone laws that prohibit protests near, yes, abortion clinics, but also schools, libraries, community centers, art centers, hospitals, and places of worship. And the BC one is the first province-wide bubble zone law that is related to places of worship. Most bubble zone laws right now are related to abortion clinics if they're provincial,

31:03or if they're related to other places, they're municipal bylaws. So this is the first provincial one in a new area. And yes, I would like to see what happens and how the legislation is drafted. There are bad and worse versions of it, because some bubble zone laws actually prohibit protesting on the basis of the topic of the protest. Winnipeg had recently proposed doing that. We threatened them with litigation and they walked it back and they didn't end up implementing that by law. Thanks to Josh and Alex, actually. And so I think we should see what BC is planning on doing, determining how bad it is, and seeing if we want to get involved in challenging it. But honestly, bubble zones in general are a whole bad legal take, and bad legal take to BC for wanting to bring one in. If you do want to learn more about all of the work we've been doing on bubble zones, I did a report last year for the McDonald's Laurier Institute. It's up on their website, and it does an in-depth analysis of what we have in Canada right

32:07now in the state of the law. Alex, what's your bad legal take this week? I'm happy to jump in, but I have to just say, because the bubble zone issue, you said Josh and I worked on it, and it looks like we're going to have to keep working on it. But it's just unbelievable to me, because it's farcical. I mean, it really, if it wasn't so absurd, it would be, it would be, well, it certainly is laughable. That was the word I was going to use, because what you have ultimately is the powers that be saying, oh, please, by all means, feel free to exercise your rights to gather and to express yourselves, including expression that is critical of we, the powers that be. But do so from over there. Don't get too close. We're not entirely okay with that. It's not acceptable. There really is no well reason basis for that, you know, as someone, as you know, Christine who comes from a criminal law background, I can think of countless criminal code provisions that would, would in fact ensure that people are protesting safely and those who don't

33:14are, you know, would they would face legal consequences, criminal consequences, bubble zones are entirely superfluous. And I can't say enough bad about them. My legal take is with respect to a comment from our federal culture minister, Mr. Mark Miller. And you'll remember, I said in my opening remarks that I would be doing my best Josh impression, and I do stand by that because, yes, my bad legal take today, I was courtesy of culture minister Mark Miller, who was also in Josh's crosshairs last week, if I recall correctly. And so last week when you and Josh spoke about the musculum title acknowledgement and what that, what that entails, you talked also about how it came about and what its implications are. There was something that stood out to me and I'll get right to it. For his part, Mr. Miller said that the rights acknowledgement has, quote, nothing to do with private property. Well, that's just simply not true.

34:15And we know that title is, of course, almost definitionally, an entitlement to the land. And I said that I had the two of you in mind when I came up with this bad legal take because what stands out is the fact that, well, let's put it this way, Christine, it seems plainly obvious to everyone that the primary issue at stake, maybe not the only issue, but certainly the primary issue, is the land itself when we're talking about title. And we can safely infer this because as Josh said last week, there are other First Nations like the Squamish Nation, which actually neighbor and in some areas overlap with the musculum. I mean, they've been categorical in stating that they will resist any encroachment on their interests. Now, this is one First Nation ready to oppose another on the basis of this, this acknowledgement. And we can only imagine that part of what's driving that opposition and that resistance is because acknowledging the title is not merely symbolic.

35:19I think that if it was, then the positions of all of the various interested parties and the different nations themselves, I think they'd be a lot less adamant. But they were very, very clear the Squamish and others that they would, they're prepared to go to court if necessary. So I think that that sort of spoils Mr. Miller's description of it being what did I say? Having nothing to do with private property. And so in any case, it goes without saying that whatever follows will be studied, debated and litigated quite fiercely. And I think it's still too soon to tell what the ultimate consequences will be. But that being said, blanket categorical statements like the one Mr. Miller make just don't hold up because it's clear that it's just clear on the face of it that title and the land itself is really what it's, that they're almost synonymous. If they aren't synonymous, they're as close as it gets. So I mean, I mean, I'm original title is a right to the land is an interest in the land.

36:19That's right. And so what could that, how could that not, how could that have, quote, nothing to do with private property? I, I, he did not answer that question when others pushed him on it. So that is why he is again deserving Mr. Mark Miller of the bad legal take this week. And, and I think that'll wrap us up, Christine. And so as usual, as you said yourself a moment ago, I, we hope that our listeners will, will rate us and of course review and subscribe. Our work can be supported in many ways, but we would ask of course that listeners subscribe to the Canadian Constitution Foundation's YouTube channel, follow us on X and of course visit our website, which is the ccf.ca. And it's there that listeners can sign up for our new and improved freedom update newsletter. I know that we've always got that on the go. We are of course a nonpartisan legal charity funded by your donations, so please do feel free to go ahead and donate.

37:21It certainly assists us greatly and we'll see you next week, thanks for listening.