I want to talk about access to justice in terms of legal aid. First, let me say thank you to the government for providing an allocation for immigrant and refugee legal aid. I think that's very important, because lots of provinces weren't providing that support.
I see two problems happening. One is that there are great disparities between different provinces in getting legal aid. We often find that some charges can get legal aid in one province but not in another.
The second thing that's happening seems more general. That is because of the constraints of legal aid funding and what I would call the “working poor”. Those who have full-time jobs but don't make a lot of money are, increasingly, finding themselves excluded from legal aid because of the crisis in funding for those who are less fortunate. We find, as I said, a lot of ordinary working folks who aren't able to access legal aid because of that lack of funding.
Those are the two things: the discrepancies between provinces and then this growing problem of those who aren't really wealthy, by any standard, not being able to access legal aid.