Justice Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2017

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Dr. Currie, you were talking earlier about the fact that some community legal clinics in southwestern Ontario are experimenting with two different approaches to outreach and the secondary legal consultation. I remember the situation in British Columbia, the fallout from 2002, because I worked for a former member of Parliament at the time, and we shared an office space with a member of the legislative assembly. You could see that a lot of people who couldn't get access to legal aid were turning to their elected representative for legal help, who were absolutely flooded on a daily basis by this. Then you look at your stats with 67% not having an understanding of the legal implications of the problem, and flowing from that only 7% deciding to use the formal justice system. Those are some pretty worrying statistics. I have seen evidence of it as well, so I would like some additional comments from you, and then following that, Ms. Govender, if you could offer some comments on that as well.

[Dr. Albert Currie]

Legal aid is always going to have limited resources. There always has been and always will be a limited amount of money that the state is prepared to spend on the poor. That's the root of the problem.

With these partnering arrangements, we're trying to leverage the enormous resources that are already out there in the community—services and agencies that have significant financial and human resources, that have an identity of interest—with legal aid plans, because ultimately we're trying to address issues of poverty. If you can do that, you can magnify the impact of legal aid enormously. It's a little bit of work and it's a very different way of delivering legal aid, and a very different way for lawyers to think about what they do than has traditionally been the case. That's part of the solution.

Again, part of it is to recognize that what you want to achieve is early intervention. You want to get as far upstream as you possibly can. A lot of that can be achieved through early-stage information and assistance mechanisms that can be provided, not only by legal aid. Don't forget that across the country there has been, for the last 40 years, a network of public legal education associations, the primary mandate of which is to provide legal information. It used to be about the law and how the justice system works. They're evolving, as well, to provide information that's solution-oriented to help people address their problems.

To address the other part of your question, for the 67% who experience problems—at various levels of complexity, I admit—who haven't a clue about the legal implications, and for the smaller percentages who didn't recognize the seriousness of the problem at all, didn't know where to go for help, had really no idea what sort of help they might need, the legal information and early assistance self-help dimensions of legal aid are probably the direction to go in.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much for that.

Ms. Govender, did you have anything to add?

[Kasari Govender]

I would say maybe one thing, which is that there's a tiny silver lining to the cuts in legal aid in B.C., because other services have grown up to try to cover the gap. They haven't done that, but if we had legal aid back, it would provide a much more fulsome system than we had before. For example, there are the legal advocates, lay people who provide legal information and who can provide that more holistic look that some people may have been looking for from their MLAs. If lawyers could actually deal with the legal problems and the advocates could do what they do best, which is to coordinate housing and social assistance and all these other pieces that could come together, there would be better solutions to the problems than there were before.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much. We really appreciate your testimony. It was very, very clear, very compelling, and very helpful.

Thank you very much, Dr. Currie.

Thank you very much, Ms. Govender.

The meeting is adjourned.