Thank you very much.
I'll make the first part of my remarks in French and the second part in English.
First, I propose to explain why most countries have law reform bodies and what those bodies do. Then I'll talk about the unique character of a law reform institution and, lastly, about the costs and losses associated with the loss of the Law Reform Commission of Canada for very specific people such as youth, seniors, Aboriginal persons and the Canadian population as a whole.
A law reform body exists to advise the government on how to minimize
the gap between law as lived and law as written.
The role of law reform commissions is to work at three levels: with the citizenry, with the research and expert community and with the decision-makers and people who make public policy.
As regards the citizenry—and this aspect of the work of law reform commissions is very important—the promises of the law often do not materialize in the way in which citizens experience the law or in the way in which citizens are subject to the law. The work of a law reform commission is thus essentially to measure the gap between what the law states and what it does. It performs this task by consulting the public, by ensuring that the public is engaged in defining the problems of the law and through empirical studies. Anecdote is not a sufficient basis for this; you also have to know how to measure the gap. We're trying to measure the problems of the law in society.
This first evaluation is done in the perspective of identifying the questions that concern Canadians and that must lead us to reflect. We must then ask the research and expert community to examine those questions. In a way, the commission acts as a link between citizens' concerns and the research community. It asks researchers to focus on questions that are at the origin of citizens' concerns. It is by reason of its somewhat prestigious status, as a result of the fact that it's related to Parliament, that it can call on prestigious researchers and approach them.
Law reform bodies have access, to a certain degree, to the best brains and especially to the best research networks. Researchers have not only internal networks, here in Canada, but also external, international networks. A law reform body is able to mobilize these research networks so that they can examine a question that arises from its consultations with citizens. It can therefore offer the Canadian public the benefit of major research networks in order to advance the law in Canada.
It also works with decision-makers. Law reform bodies circulate their research work very freely to citizens, community groups and across Canada. We know that the papers of the Law Reform Commission of Canada, for example, have often been used in many institutions in Canada.
It isn't just all the problems of gaps between the written law and the law as experienced that can be resolved by legislation. Many problems can be solved through changes in institutional methods and through the development of better practices. The commission can play, and has played, a catalyst role, leading various players to develop better practices.
Law reform bodies work in the long-term justice agenda and they help inform government by presenting the best available research at the time and all the options that are available to government. They also act in a way that helps the citizens participate in their work. The Law Commission in a certain way was able to bridge some traditional divide in Canada between civil law and common law, between French and English and aboriginal culture. It was able to draw on civil law, common law, and aboriginal cultures to bring about and examine the range of solutions that would have been appropriate in a particular response. It then gives its work to different institutions and to Parliament through the Minister of Justice, who then tables it in Parliament, and can act upon it or not.
A law reform body does not replace a research department in the Department of Justice. It acts on different subjects. It acts on the infrastructure of law. It acts on making sure the infrastructure does not become disconnected from the reality of citizens. If you live in a society with a rule of law you don't want the gap between the reality and the law to be too large. That's the essence and that's its mission.
Why is it that the Law Commission is unique institutionally? Why is it useful? Why is it that it cannot be replaced by the two organizations that the minister has suggested could easily do the work?
The Minister of Justice explained the decision to eliminate funding by saying the work could be done by the Department of Justice or the Canadian Bar Association. Almost immediately the Canadian Bar Association said no, we can't do that work. It's very important, and this is a point I'd really like to stress, to note that at times problems of a legal nature cannot be resolved by the Canadian Bar. They are in conflict--they are representing the members. Some of the solutions to legal or social issues cannot be brought about simply by lawyers, and I say that as a lawyer. Law reform does not belong to lawyers only but to every Canadian. The point here is that the Canadian Bar Association, although it does great work, cannot draw upon as much of a multidisciplinary approach and have the credibility when it speaks on law reform.
I think the Department of Justice is also curtailed in this role. The Department of Justice must act on the immediate concerns the minister has. It's obvious at a time--for example, after September 11--when it was drawn into a heavy agenda of responding immediately to the emergency. What the Law Commission can do is to look at some technical, long-range issues that bear upon the efficiency of the legal system and its continuing relevance to the Canadian public.
What has the commission done and what are the things we can measure in terms of laws? I'm going to talk a little about the cost and I'm going to talk about the cost of the abrupt closure of the Law Commission.
It has been said by many, and they were quoted in The Globe and Mail and so on, that the closure of the Law Commission is a blemish on Canada's reputation as a leader in the world of law reform. To quote one:
[They are killing] a program that had attention around the world and made Canada look good.
That was true. Canada had a Law Commission that was a leader in its strategy of engaging Canadians in its work. It was a strategy to have people participate in the work of the commission. It had high school contests on legal issues, and a program that was directed at young scholars to discuss issues that were relevant and so on. It had thousands of small meetings throughout Canada--in the Yukon, New Brunswick, Newfoundland--discussing some issues of relevance to the law system.
In addition, and I think this is another part that should be considered here, the Law Commission of Canada Act says the Law Commission must work in partnerships. It established throughout its nine years of existence many partnerships, and all these partnerships, obviously, are now being jeopardized; some partners have some of their work highly jeopardized by the abrupt closure.
The list of partnerships includes the North-South Institute, the C.D. Howe Institute, the Indigenous Bar Association, UBC Press, Les presses de l'Université Laval, CPRN , NALL, the Democratic Reform Group, SSHRC, the Conference Board of Canada, etc.
In its work the commission, because it was a small agency, had to create partnerships to increase its research budget. The way it worked was to go to SSHRC and say: one issue that came from our consultation is that people are preoccupied, for example, with the difference between private security and public security and police—there's an increasing number of private security guards. What does this mean for our legal system? They would ask SHHRC to create a theme, for example, on this increase in security.
It was thus able to translate the needs and worries of Canadians about their legal system into a research agenda through partnerships. It was quite innovative and very efficient in this way.
Of all the organizations that were connected with the Law Commission, and all the partnerships—I haven't mentioned them all, obviously, the student co-ops, elders' law conferences, and so on—there are three groups I want to discuss particularly whose voice is very hard to gather in law reform. The commission did some particularly interesting work, and I think we should take note of how much.
The first one is with youth voices. Over the years the commission had supported a partnership in schools to develop a contest in high school dealing with, for example in one year, the vulnerable workers—working as a teenager. We know there are a lot of accidents when teenagers start to work, because they don't know what the laws are and also are taking undue risks. This contest not only brought a bit of sensitivity to the issue, but also engaged youth in reflecting on how in fact they could improve and diminish the gap between law as promised and law as lived.
Youth voices, I think, is a particularly big loss here.
Concerning older adults, the commission had developed a program that involved older adults in defining some issues for them.
And in terms of aboriginal voices they had a longstanding partnership with the Indigenous Bar Association and many projects with respect to aboriginal issues. I think this is a real loss, because it was a matter of trust to establish it initially and to help them be involved in this project.
I will conclude.
Groups and organizations are not the only ones that have suffered from the elimination of funding for the commission. You must also consider all the volunteers and all the people who have taken part in the forums organized by the commission in the past nine years. The price that must be paid is the price of confidence in government.
These people who have taken part in various forums in the past nine years are now facing the sudden disappearance, without any consultation, of the Law Reform Commission of Canada. This closing has not been done in a very transparent manner. It wasn't proceeded by a consultation or evaluation, unlike its implementation, which was preceded by two years of consultations of a very large number of groups and constituents. It's a major loss for all those who took the risk of expressing their views and who took part with all their soul in the law reform effort in Canada.