Mr. Speaker, with respect to expenditures incurred in relation to legal proceedings involving veterans and veterans' groups, since January 1, 2018, to the extent that the information requested is or may be protected by any legal privileges, including solicitor-client privilege or settlement privilege, the federal Crown asserts those privileges. In this case, it has only waived solicitor-client privilege to the extent of revealing the total legal costs, as defined below.
The total legal costs, including actual and notional costs, associated with legal proceedings involving veterans and veterans' groups since January 1, 2018, amount to approximatively $5,475,000. These costs cover all types of legal proceedings, including individual and class actions brought by veterans, judicial review applications of decisions of the Veterans Review and Appeal Board and appeals. The Crown is usually not initiating these proceedings but rather acts as a defendant or respondent. The total legal costs are with respect to litigation and litigation support services, which were provided in these cases by the Department of Justice. Department of Justice lawyers, notaries and paralegals are salaried public servants and, therefore, no legal fees are incurred for their services. A “notional amount” can, however, be provided to account for the legal services they provide. The notional amount is calculated by multiplying the total hours recorded in the responsive files for the relevant period by the applicable approved internal legal services hourly rates. Actual costs are composed of file-related legal disbursements paid by the department and then cost-recovered from the client departments or agencies, as well as the costs of legal agents who may be retained by the Minister of Justice to provide litigation services in certain cases. The amount mentioned in this response is based on information currently contained in the Department of Justice systems, as of October 6, 2020.