Justice committee  I can speak based on my own experience, because I was a courtroom lawyer for thirteen years before I went to work at Legal Aid Ontario. Although the evidence is anecdotal, it's universally agreed that unrepresented parties in the courts make the courts much less efficient. It imposes a real extra duty on the judge to try to make sure the party understands what is going on in the courtroom.

Justice committee  Oh, no. We're all very challenged--very challenged.

Justice committee  Yes, we did. We did quite a bit of work on that. We have a business analysis department. We looked at the number of particular kinds of cases--firearms cases, for example. With the use of our computer records, we can break out smaller particular sectors of the certificate caseload, and we worked very closely with our provincial counterparts to come up with some agreed upon estimate of the percentage of cases that would be affected and what the probable effects were.

Justice committee  No, it's over three years.

Justice committee  It's just for Ontario.

Justice committee  We know that there has been some federal research into this. The Department of Justice conducted some research on what happened to unrepresented parties in the system, and they found that to a very significant degree they do in fact just plead guilty. On the civil side, we did a very tiny project in Legal Aid Ontario in Toronto with family law applicants who were refused.

Justice committee  I don't remember seeing anything that separates out the aboriginal clients in that regard.

Justice committee  Of the total budget, it's about 16%. The total amount of federal money going to Legal Aid Ontario is about $50 million or $51 million per year.

Justice committee  It varies a lot, depending on the.... I think the highest percentage is New Brunswick, which I think may be as high as 60%, but it's dramatically lower than that in all the other provinces.

Justice committee  The federal government pays the whole cost in the territories.

Justice committee  Yes. In some places they're together in the same building or side by side, but historically they are two separate systems that we are slowly working to bring closer together in order to serve the clients better.

Justice committee  Speaking on the legal aid side, on the certificate and duty counsel program, I don't think you'd find much inefficiency. You certainly wouldn't find much overbilling. We are very careful to constantly be monitoring the amount of money that we pay to lawyers in general and to specific lawyers.

Justice committee  Well, we do now. I think there was one case in the last several years, and then recently there has been a very well-publicized significant arrest of a number of young men. That case is proceeding in the Brampton courts.

Justice committee  Yes. We have been advised that there is a special pocket of federal money set aside for these cases.

Justice committee  Absolutely not; it's not close.