Evidence of meeting #57 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 immigration.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Vice-President, Barreau du Québec
No. First I would be very glad if politicians would campaign to give more money to lawyers, but I don't think that's going to be the case in the near future.
Conservative
Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
I think that's an excellent idea, but anyway, that's another story.
Vice-President, Barreau du Québec
The competition has been great in Quebec because it has enabled the public system and the private system to be efficient. The goal that was set at the outset of the regime in 1972 was to enable private lawyers to continue to do this mandate for the public body—not taking care of all the requests, but maintaining a balance so that they don't have lawyers doing nothing, and have a buffer with private practice .
But in recent years what we've been seeing is the beginning of a shift towards the public system, because the private practice lawyers won't accept mandates, as Mr. Aucoin mentioned, given the limited amount of money they would receive, or they would limit their practice to the mandates on which they can make money. This is about volume. For example, one of the interesting tariffs is the following. If you plead guilty to an accusation, there's a very short amount of time invested, and it's a lump sum. So if you have 20 clients in a morning pleading guilty, that's a great morning for a lawyer.
Conservative
Vice-President, Barreau du Québec
And it's not hourly based, and that's an incentive. If the client's not ready to plead guilty, the lawyer will make an analysis and consider whether to take the file, because if the lawyer has to invest a lot of time, as Mr. Aucoin did in the example he gave, it might not be worth it.
So we see a shift. But at the outset, the system was really designed to make sure that the responsibility for the legal aid system was not left only to one set of lawyers, and since we have fewer private practice lawyers taking mandates, we have other lawyers to do the mandates. But now with the Jordan decision, we have a real challenge because we have more judges, we have more crown attorneys, and we have more rooms, but we don't have more legal aid. We don't have more resources to process the cases.
Conservative
Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
That's interesting. In one of your examples, you said that the legal aid lawyers can sometimes make money if they get a number of pleas or convictions on summary conviction. Sometimes that might work to the disadvantage of the lawyer—
Conservative
Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
—if they are charged with a hybrid offence and they put a lot of hours into convincing the crown to reduce it to a summary conviction, and then they find out that they get their $150 in the mail or whatever it is. So it's not necessarily to their advantage.
Vice-President, Barreau du Québec
You don't want incentives in the system where the lawyer—
Vice-President, Barreau du Québec
—will calculate which mandates he will take and which mandates he won't.
Conservative
Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
That's a very good point.
You mentioned criminal summary offences and the federal government's role. Other than creating the offences, which is the federal government's role, there are no consequences.... You referred to it in the middle of your testimony, and I may have misunderstood what you said, but you made a specific reference to the federal government with respect to legal aid. I wonder if you could expand on that.
Vice-President, Barreau du Québec
Let me clarify what I meant. The responsibility for legal aid is something I link to the legislator who makes the legislation.
Vice-President, Barreau du Québec
So, summary conviction is a shared responsibility. Some penal offences come from the provincial governments and some from the federal government, so it's shared.
Conservative
Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
You said that some of the fees paid to lawyers are not comparable with the fees paid other provinces. Were you talking about Quebec, specifically?
Conservative
Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
What is the situation in Quebec? Is it lower, higher, or in the middle?