Justice committee  Thank you.

Justice committee  That would be not a preferred option at all, because effectively you would be moving independent paralegals who are separately regulated and separately trained into the supervision of lawyers. Why one would do that is entirely beyond me.

Justice committee  The most significant issue—and of course I agree with you—is that if you talk to judges, you find that self-represented persons, whether they're in the criminal law system or the civil law system, cause problems in the system. They cause delay. That's just clear. Not only are they not able to get as just a result, because we know that's true, but they clog up the system, waste time, and waste court resources that could otherwise be available.

Justice committee  As long as the Criminal Code limits agents' use to six months and there are no six-month offences, there's no good way through that. The only possibility is having separate provincial regimes, but that doesn't work for a few reasons. First of all, as a law society, we believe in independence of the legal professions, and we think it would be wrong for the province, which is the prosecution arm, to also be the decision-maker on the scope of practice for the defence.

Justice committee  It is true that students are under the supervision of lawyers, so that option would address that aspect, but what we've had is long-standing use of paralegals—previously unregulated, now regulated—and you would eliminate that representation.

Justice committee  It would be nice to be able to give you good, reliable statistics. One of the things that is unfortunate about our system is that we don't have great statistics. We know that articling students are very commonly used by criminal lawyers in the defence bar. I'm confident that a very significant amount of work that is done in respect of set dates and other matters is done by students now.

Justice committee  I'd like to make this a little bit real. My daughter was a law student a year ago. She represented a person who was accused in a summary conviction matter. They were accused of switching a label on a bottle of hair shampoo, and they were accused of theft under.... My daughter, being a legal aid student in the clinic, was able to provide legal services to this person that would not otherwise have been available.

Justice committee  Thank you. As indicated, I am the elected head of the Law Society of Ontario. Ms. Clément is an appointed bencher. Behind me is John Callaghan, who is an elected lawyer bencher. We thank you for letting us speak today. The Law Society of Ontario regulates more than 53,000 lawyers.