Thanks very much for the question.
I can say what the Canadian Bar Association has had to say, which we subscribe to as well, and that is that essential legal needs are those needs or legal problems that put in jeopardy someone's liberty, personal safety, security, health, housing, or the ability to meet the basic necessities of life. That seems like a pretty broad range of things, but the legal aid systems that are already in place have mechanisms right now for serving the public. So the questions are what standards do they use, what are the eligibility criteria, and what things are covered? It's not as if the mechanisms don't exist now.
When we deal with other areas that we consider to be essential—education, health, emergency services, and so forth—we have structures in place for those too. My answer is that it's a little difficult to give...in that I think what it comes down to isn't necessarily a change to the structure that you would set up in any province but a prioritization in funding and a change in the understanding. As I said in my response to Mr. Nicholson, certainly in our province, legal aid has been one of the first places governments go to cut. Making something an essential service, or trying to get that recognition to be shared by governments, whether voluntarily or through some other means, would set out the proposition that it wouldn't be the first place you would go because of the cascading effects and the cascading costs to the public purse that result. I think it's a change in mindset perhaps more than it is the creation of structures.