Evidence of meeting #40 for Justice and Human Rights in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was federal.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you.
I very much appreciated your testimony. I think we all found it enormously helpful in our study. Thank you to all the witnesses for coming.
Mr. McKinnon.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
This is a question for Mr. Fowler. Ms. Go has suggested that the Ontario model for legal aid is the best, second only perhaps to the U.K.'s.
Could you comment on that from a B.C. perspective?
12:35 p.m.
Representative, British Columbia, Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers
I don't work in Ontario, so I don't know the formula, but I do know that as a response to the Code and LeSage report, they did bring in higher rates for senior counsel. I believe it was $140 or $150 an hour, something like that. I can't say whether it's the gold standard. Unfortunately, I think many of the legal aid plans still remain sort of the rusty steel standard.
There are ways to go. What we have to do is encourage senior counsel to be able to take on the difficult cases, to mentor young counsel, and to look upon legal aid, from a criminal lawyer's point of view, as investing in the system in the same way as we invest in training police officers. It could be recognized that well-trained police officers investigate better and present better evidence in court. We invest in prosecutors. We invest in judges.
We have to look upon defence counsel and invest in them, and then the system will work better.
12:35 p.m.
Clinic Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
The Ontario system is considered one of the best for two reasons. One is the per capita investment in legal aid. The second is that it's a mixed model—it has duty counsel and it also has community legal clinics—and it covers a wide variety of areas of law. It's not just about criminal and family law, but it deals with a lot of the essential law that Mr. Ferguson referred to as well.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much.
Have a great day, everyone.
This meeting is adjourned.