Thank you for the opportunity to present submissions today. We are both very pleased to be here.
West Coast LEAF's mandate is to achieve equality by changing historic patterns of systemic discrimination against women through B.C.-based litigation, law reform, and public legal education. Although we work closely with our colleagues at the other end of the table, here at LEAF we are separate organizations. We are separately governed, staffed, and incorporated.
West Coast LEAF has considerable expertise in access to justice, which we have detailed in our written submission. For example, two years ago we received funding from Status of Women Canada to conduct a cross-provincial consultation on how best to meet women's legal needs in the province.
This study culminated in the development of a model for women's legal services, which is a storefront clinic in Vancouver delivering a full range of legal services for women, with a primary focus on family law. It's the only model of its kind outside of Ontario, and I'm proud to say that the doors open in May.
We are appearing before the committee today to discuss two specific areas of concern to women in this country, particularly in B.C. First, I'm going to talk about an issue that hasn't been spoken about today, which is legal aid, and in particular, civil legal aid. Then my colleague will spend some time talking about the court challenges program and address some of what has already been raised today.
While the commitment to criminal legal aid funding in this year's federal budget is admirable and necessary, it is civil legal aid that is most woefully underfunded in many provinces, particularly in B.C. For women, it is civil legal aid, particularly for family law matters, that has the most direct impact on the respect and preservation of their rights.
There are a number of reasons for this difference, including that men are far more likely to be charged with a criminal offence than women, and therefore men are more likely to need the criminal legal aid system. Women also, statistically speaking, have lower incomes, particularly following relationship breakdown. They are therefore less able to pay for counsel.
Of course, where family law matters involve heterosexual couples, both the man and woman have to appear, but men are often more likely to be able to afford their own counsel. Women are more likely to rely on legal aid. This is borne out by the numbers of legal aid applicants in family law.
Women are also more profoundly impacted by an inability to access counsel. Women are more likely to be the victims of violence from their male spouses rather than vice versa, and therefore their safety and the safety of their children is more likely at stake during family law proceedings. Further, women are still predominantly the primary caregivers of children and so have more to lose when they are not represented by counsel. In other words, a failure to fund civil legal aid, particularly for family law disputes, has a disproportionate and detrimental impact on women.
Despite this need, B.C. has one of the lowest funding per capita rates for civil legal aid in the country, and Canada as a whole falls far behind other developed nations in ensuring that those who cannot afford counsel can still access the justice system. This fact has not gone unnoticed on the international stage. In 2008, the UN CEDAW committee, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, noted in its report on Canada's compliance with that convention that it was deeply concerned that the lack of funding for civil legal aid, in particular in B.C.—they called out B.C.—was denying low-income women access to legal representation and legal services.
According to the World Justice Project, a project that measures and ranks countries around the world on rule of law, Canada is 54th in the world in providing access to counsel on civil matters. Fifty-three nations beat Canada in providing civil legal aid, which doesn't really match many Canadians' picture of what is supposedly a world-class justice system. If we can't access it, it's not much good that it's world class.
In conclusion on the legal aid piece, we highly recommend that the federal government commit to targeted legal aid funding for civil legal aid, including for family and immigration law matters. In fact, this change is required to ensure that men and women have substantially equal access to the justice system.
Such targeted funding would reflect a transparent commitment to an accessible justice system on the part of the federal government and would have a substantial impact on the lives of women and children in the country, as well as on rule of law more generally.
Thank you, and I'll pass it over to my colleague.