Thank you, Ms. Ouellet.
Mr. Chair, members of the committee, good afternoon.
As we have seen earlier today, Ontario has a number of programs to support newcomers with settlement, housing assistance, employment services or language training, including information and legal training.
The Department of Justice provides the AJEFO with financial support through the Access to Justice in Both Official Languages Support Fund under the Roadmap for Canada's Official Languages 2013-2018.
Today I will present five AJEFO programs for francophone newcomers based on the roadmap's two pillars: information and training.
The information pillar consists of providing direct legal services and information to the public. The AJEFO has three programs that fall under this pillar.
First, the Canadian CliquezJustice.ca portal offers simplified legal information in plain language to the general public on how the justice system works, careers in justice and various themes in several legal areas such as family law, employment law, immigration and citizenship law.
Recent reports on access to justice in both official languages estimate that roughly 12 million Canadians will experience at least one legal problem in any given three-year period. Few will have the resources to solve them. It is difficult if not impossible for a newcomer to be familiar with every Canadian law and the complex workings of the Canadian legal system.
CliquezJustice.ca aims to help francophone newcomers to Canada. With a better understanding of the Canadian legal system, these newcomers will have the legal skills and tools to deal with various legal issues. Since it went live in February 2012, CliquezJustice.ca has had more than 130,000 visits, with roughly 368,000 page views.
Second, the AJEFO now offers service directly to the public in Ontario. On January 15, 2015, the AJEFO opened Ontario's first legal information centre in downtown Ottawa. The Ottawa Legal Information Centre is a four-year pilot project providing confidential, bilingual services to the public free of charge, regardless of a person's income or type of legal problem. The centre serves as a one-stop shop where clients can receive legal information and a referral to the appropriate resource.
Currently, close to 50% of people decide to represent themselves in legal matters, a situation that puts additional pressure on the justice system. By informing and guiding members of the public, including newcomers, the centre seeks to reduce the wait times and penalties associated with the justice system, and promote the active offer of services in French. Let me repeat, the services are provided both in French and in English.
Since it opened on January 15, 2015, the centre has served 177 clients. Of this number, 51 clients, or 28%, were francophone and 35 clients, or about 20%, identified themselves as being a member of a visible minority or an Aboriginal community.
I will now talk about the third project under the information component.
Since 2011, the AJEFO has offered a series of law camps to more than 1,350 Grade 5 students in Ottawa. The camps include a component related to the Ontario Ministry of Education’s Programme d'appui aux nouveaux arrivants, a support program for newcomers. The law camps teach young francophones about the foundations of Canadian society, such as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the language rights established under the charter, thereby strengthening their sense of identity and belonging.
I will now turn to the second pillar: training, which includes training to legal professionals.
While the two projects I will present primarily benefit francophone legal professionals, they indirectly serve all francophone newcomers who require legal services.
First, the AJEFO has been managing the portal Jurisource.ca since 2013. This national French-language portal features the tools and resources used by legal professionals in their work in French.
The portal is a single window providing access to a wide range of practical resources such as model documents, which are often unavailable or difficult to find, unlike similar English-language resources.
Jurisource.ca is intended to improve the language skills of legal professionals. By reducing the time a legal professional spends on research and by improving that person's ability to write in French, Jurisource.ca benefits clients in terms of cost and quality. Since it was launched in March 2013, Jurisource.ca has had 23,700 visits, with close to 72,000 page views.
Second, since 2011, the AJEFO has developed and held two family mediation training sessions in French for 98 professionals from the justice sector. The AJEFO will deliver a third such session in 2016, focusing on mediation strategies in an ethnocultural context.
Since Ontario is home to close to 70% of the francophone immigrants who settle outside Quebec, the AJEFO believes that it is vital for all mediators, whether they are legal professionals or stakeholders, to recognize and understand ethnocultural differences as they apply in the context of mediation. The goal is to have competent legal professionals who are sensitive to ethnocultural issues and able to serve the immigrant population.
This concludes our comments. Ms. Ouellet and I would be happy to answer your questions.