In Quebec, legal aid rates are negotiated by the bar association, which represents the lawyers, and the justice department, which holds the funding. The current agreement on the tariff of fees is expiring in September, I believe, and will need to be renegotiated.
I will tell you that we have been putting pressure on the Quebec bar for a few years now, and we have been especially active since the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act was amended. Those changes made things even harder for us. The bar agrees that the rates are ridiculous and make no sense. At the same time, we have ethical duties that we must fulfil, no matter how much we are paid.
The pressure has been brought to bear, but we have still not reached an equal footing; in fact, we are nowhere near being on equal footing. The issue is that, in Quebec, we are paid on a mandate basis, according to the service rendered, whereas, in Ontario, lawyers are paid mainly by the hour. Philosophically, then, the approach is entirely different. Of course, if you calculate the average number of hours a refugee claim takes, the comparison doesn't hold water.