Evidence of meeting #65 for Justice and Human Rights in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was budget.
A video is available from Parliament.
NDP
Hoang Mai NDP Brossard—La Prairie, QC
My question is a bit more specific. It's not about transfers.
I want to talk about situations where a province or a first nation takes legal action against the government and where the case has to be brought before the Supreme Court, for instance.
What part of the budget is that in and on what line?
Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney General of Canada, Department of Justice
That has to do with our second strategic objective. We don't have any exact figures regarding that because we provide departments with legal advice. We provide legal services to all departments and regional offices to help them with their operations, and with bills and policy-making. That includes other people who are in charge of litigations and defence here, in Ottawa.
That's not on any specific line. We have about 2,500 lawyers, and approximately 90% of them provide assistance to departments—be it in terms of legal advice, policy-making or litigations.
NDP
Hoang Mai NDP Brossard—La Prairie, QC
Just to know, do we pay for private services, such as lawyers representing the government in terms of when the law is not constitutional, for instance, or things like that?
Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney General of Canada, Department of Justice
There are some cases in which departments or the Department of Justice will retain outside counsel, particularly in areas of expertise that are quite specialized. For cases that are quite large and often in remote areas where we don't have lawyers, we also provide services, as we talked about earlier, under the net vote authority and for which clients pay. A significant amount of litigation is done on that basis.
Hoang Mai NDP Brossard—La Prairie, QC
Can you tell us whether or not in the last years it has gone up in terms of cost, not just the outside counsel but government spending in terms of representation or going to court?
Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney General of Canada, Department of Justice
Yes, the spending for the department has gone up. It's certainly levelled off in the last few years. If you go back over, say, five years, spending for legal services in government went up both because of the increase in complexity and number of cases and related to salary increases and just the cost of hiring and employing staff. Demand has gone up, and the cost of delivering the services has gone up. That is true.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Very good.
Are there any other questions for the staff that we have with us tonight?
Seeing none, thank you very much. Thank you for being here.
We will move now to the vote on these items.
NDP
Françoise Boivin NDP Gatineau, QC
You asked for some documents. I think they were very brilliant questions, personally. I'm really looking forward to getting the answers before.... There's no rush to vote on this. I think we are good until May.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
As chair I was just bringing it forward that we could vote on it.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Anything else, then?
Just a reminder that any amendments to the private member's bill which we'll be dealing with on Monday must be with the clerk by Friday. That would be great. We'll be dealing with that item. We'll be dealing with the private member's bill from the Senate next Wednesday. We hope to do that one all in one day: witnesses and clause-by-clause study.
With that, we'll see you next week.
The meeting is adjourned.