Thank you to the committee for inviting me.
Allow me to tell you a bit about myself. I spent 37 years working as a legal aid staff lawyer, which means that I was a paid employee. I practised in the Joliette region and the Eastern Townships, so mainly in Quebec.
Social law accounted for about half of my practice, family law represented a third, and general civil law made up the rest. I also did a fair bit of work with community-based social and consumer advocacy groups.
I was also the president of the Fédération des avocates et avocats de l'aide juridique du Québec. In that role, I was involved in negotiating collective agreements for legal aid lawyers and active in coalitions working to defend the legal aid system in the face of threats and cuts. I also called for increases to the eligibility threshold. For many years, it remained very low in Quebec and did not go up. Just about a year ago, it was raised to match minimum wage, which means it is still quite low.
I'd like to take a few moments to tell you about legal aid in Quebec. One of my colleagues spoke to you about one aspect of the system. When Quebec implemented its legal aid system, it opted to have staff lawyers all over the province and to ensure that eligible clients could choose to be represented by a staff lawyer or a private bar lawyer. Private lawyers representing clients have to agree to be paid at legal aid rates, which are very low when compared with those in Ontario. In comparing Quebec and Ontario, I should also point out that, despite having half the budget Ontario does, Quebec's legal aid system handles nearly twice the requests. Clearly, then, the choices that were made come at a cost. I think it's important to put that into perspective.
The idea behind having staff lawyers was to build expertise in what was called at the time poverty law. There was a recognition that poor and disadvantaged individuals had unique legal needs and that it was important to build expertise in the problems they encountered and in the ways to approach those problems. Those are the general features of Quebec's legal aid regime.
What assessment can we make of the regime today? Quebec's system is widely considered by Canadian observers to provide good coverage as compared with the regimes of other provinces. It is, to some extent, seen as efficient given that it operates at reasonable cost.
I should also note that the competition between staff lawyers and private lawyers helped ease the bureaucracy associated with the services of staff lawyers, although not eliminating it altogether. The fact of the matter is that, if clients can go to the private practice across the street for representation instead of yours, there is an interest in providing quality service.
Another important observation is that those who administer Quebec's legal aid regime unfortunately evaluate the work done by lawyers solely on the basis of case volume, thereby favouring mass practices rather than principle-based challenges or more difficult and demanding cases.
The system isn't exactly favourable to lawyers who do want to take on these cases. Nevertheless, the overall assessment remains positive when it comes to Quebec's regime, which could even be held up as a model for other provinces in some respects.
I would also like to share with you some observations that come from my personal experience and that, in my view, reflect the ideals that should characterize Canada's legal aid systems.
My first observation is that the law is not neutral. We teach law students that it is the emanation of immanent justice and so forth. The reality, however, is entirely different. The law also reflects the balance of power in society. Laws are not designed to help the poor or vulnerable. Lawyers who represent poor individuals must go beyond the normal limits of a lawyer's work, in my view. They must convince the judge to view the law in a different way and to change the jurisprudence. It takes imagination and, what I like to call, the capacity to elicit outrage, meaning that, when confronted with a situation that is unacceptable, the lawyer must find a way to bring it to the court's attention and to sway the judge. That works sometimes, but not always. It has to be done, however, and taking up those kinds of challenges must be one of the functions of legal aid.
My second observation is that, when you are poor, you are essentially living without the power to control your own life. The fact of the matter is that others always make decisions for you. For that reason, lawyers working on legal aid cases have to learn how to work with people rather than for people. Lawyers have a tendency to want to reassure people and tell them that they are going to take care of everything, but that does not help the person take control of their destiny. It is important to be mindful of that.
My final observation pertains to individual cases, trials, and even precedent-setting cases. All of those elements lead to some progress, but what really leads to progress is the work that lawyers and legal aid networks do with community groups in calling for changes that will lead to a more fair and equitable society.
Thank you. We will probably have an opportunity to discuss this further during the question and answer portion.