CEDAW/C/51/D/19/2008 Committee17 — meaningless. The author did not exhaust domestic remedies in the third legal action either. Indeed, the third suit, which was filed on 16 November 2004 (i.e., eight years after the second), once again named the estate of her former partner and, in addition, the new owners of Parcel No. 138, to whom her former partner’s estate had sold the property. As in the case of the second, in this third suit, the author sought to secure recognition of her property rights. Neither the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation nor any other Canadian authority was named in the third suit. As is also true of the first two suits, this third legal action yields no basis for finding that the author was discriminated against by any Canadian authority because she was a woman, an aboriginal woman or a woman living in that region of the country. This third action can thus be regarded as a means employed by the author to attempt to make up for her failure to lodge an appeal with the Supreme Court of Canada against the dismissal of her second suit by the Court of Appeal for the Northwest Territories. The judge who heard the third case ruled that, since the first two suits had not been examined on the merits, the author was entitled to bring the third action and that it was not an abuse of legal process, as the respondents had claimed. That decision, taken on 21 July 2005, opened the way for a consideration of the merits of the author’s complaints, which had not taken place before owing to the author’s failure to take the necessary steps in either of the two preceding legal actions. The judge did, however, instruct the author to pay the court costs of the second suit and to post security for costs for the third action within 60 days; otherwise, it would be struck from the docket. The author did not appeal that decision before the Court of Appeal for the Northwest Territories. In my opinion, the author has therefore not exhausted the available domestic remedies with regard to the third legal action and has not cited any circumstance that would have released her from that obligation. Neither financial difficulties nor doubts as to the outcome of an application lodged with the Court of Appeal absolve her from the obligation to exhaust domestic remedies.18 2.7 Furthermore, in neither the second nor the third actions can the remedies be said to have been unreasonably prolonged, and this can therefore not be used as an argument for exempting the author from the obligation to exhaust domestic remedies. The merits 3.1 I do not concur with the description of the facts of the case and the conclusions reached on that basis by the Committee, as presented in paragraphs 10.2 to 10.4 of the communication. The author’s complaints were not examined on the merits in any of the three court actions which she filed, and in no case was she able to provide evidence of the act or acts of discrimination which she alleged were committed against her by the respondents in those suits, including the two State housing authorities named in them, or by the legal aid service or its court-appointed attorneys. At no time in any of these three civil actions did discrimination on the basis of sex, marital status, cultural heritage, place of residence or any other ground figure among the complaints put forward by the author in her own case. The second suit is the only one in which a Canadian authority (the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation) is named; in the other two, all the respondents are private parties (W.S., his estate, and the parties who purchased Parcel No. 138 from that estate). In the introductory paragraphs of this written opinion, I indicated that, in my view, the author is not qualified under the terms of article 2 of the Optional Protocol to submit a communication on behalf of the groups of women that she has named, and I would add here 17 18 Communications No. 10/2005, N.S.F. v. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, para. 7.3; No. 17/2007, Zheng v. The Netherlands, para. 7.3. See, for example, Human Rights Committee, communication No. 397/1990, P.S. and T.S. v. Denmark, para. 5.4. 21

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