Mr. Speaker, the Department of Justice is unable to provide a response as the department has an active litigation inventory of more than 35,000 cases. An extensive manual search through our records would be required and is not possible within the time allotted. An aggregate amount of the expenditures related to legal services to government programs can be found online in the Department of Justice’s public accounts: https://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/recgen/cpc-pac/2018/vol2/justice/index-eng.html.
The vast majority of the legal proceedings involving the Government of Canada are handled by Department of Justice lawyers, notaries and paralegals who are salaried public servants. For cost recovery purposes the Department of Justice records the number of hours of work performed on each file and multiplies the hours by differential hourly rates by level of counsel, notary or paralegal. It also records whether the work is performed by regional employees, for which the department pays rent to Public Services and Procurement Canada, or headquarters employees in client premises, for which the client bears the costs of rent. Recovery from different clients varies according to a range of reductions applied based upon, among other things, the different amounts of historical resources within the Department of Justice dedicated to each client. As well, many legal proceedings and litigation files have multiple clients who share the cost recoveries from the Department of Justice.