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Justice committee  If that were a recommendation I could have made an hour ago, I would have done so. I think it's actually quite important, and it has been well documented. As we have the discussion about how access to justice works, it's going to work better the more we pay attention to what people need, rather than what lawyers and judges feel they should have.

May 2nd, 2017Committee meeting

Mark Benton

Justice committee  I mentioned earlier that the Association of Legal Aid Plans had gotten together with CBA and identified benchmarks, and I can provide those to you. It wasn't possible for me to talk to you about them meaningfully in 10 minutes, but they are important and valuable, and designed to be malleable to local circumstance, even within provinces and territories.

May 2nd, 2017Committee meeting

Mark Benton

Justice committee  I think that part of the piece.... Mr. Nicholson's questions alluded to this earlier, in terms of where the provinces are going to be on this if you're going to say.... Is it “We just want more money; leave it to us to spend”? I think, in fairness, that's often what everybody's heard.

May 2nd, 2017Committee meeting

Mark Benton

Justice committee  I've done legal aid for 30 years. I've had lots of indigenous clients, and I have run this plan, so I am accountable for this for the last 12 years. I was surprised that we were getting such a consistent.... Oh, sorry, and I'm a lawyer. I said that I think it's because we're lawyers.

May 2nd, 2017Committee meeting

Mark Benton

Justice committee  Yes. I think one-size-fits-all only works for toques in Canada. I think we need to tailor justice to local circumstance. It's a terrific example. Those large criminal cases, which virtually no Canadians can afford to defend, are often publicly funded for the very reason that you've identified.

May 2nd, 2017Committee meeting

Mark Benton

Justice committee  I think, Mr. Duvall, I'd have to put it in the framework of the attorney general of the day, who felt strongly that it wasn't appropriate for the province to fund people to have lawyers to argue in court about custody, access, and division of assets. He was quite clear about that.

May 2nd, 2017Committee meeting

Mark Benton

Justice committee  If there's money available in a given year, my managers will have discretion to grant additional resources. We're one of the plans that has a capped budget. We cannot run a deficit, so they run it that way. Typically, what happens is that sometimes clients go without lawyers.

May 2nd, 2017Committee meeting

Mark Benton

May 2nd, 2017Committee meeting

Mark Benton

Justice committee  The provincial government decided to no longer fund traditional models of family legal aid and instead to fund only emergency levels of service.

May 2nd, 2017Committee meeting

Mark Benton

Justice committee  That was a political decision. The literature on legal aid funding indicates that it's typically a political decision. It's the only way they can explain why things vary so much. Even within Canada, the variation in per capita funding for legal aid is substantial, but nary 100%.

May 2nd, 2017Committee meeting

Mark Benton

Justice committee  I think it's important that in Canada we have high levels of consistency in our justice system, and legal aid is an important component of that. In Canada, we have a standard framework for what judges are paid. We do a number of things that make sense in the scheme of things, but around legal aid there's a much higher level of diversity—a troubling level—than you see in other social services in Canada.

May 2nd, 2017Committee meeting

Mark Benton

Justice committee  One of the things that happens is that you get an awful lot of people in court without lawyers and with serious legal problems that go unresolved, and that tends to push up health and social service costs. There's quite a bit of social science in that area right now. Mr. Duvall, at the risk of going too far into detail, one of the things that the Association of Legal Aid Plans of Canada and the Canadian Bar Association have done, as a collaboration, is to come up with seven benchmarks for legal aid that describe what that broad framework looks like.

May 2nd, 2017Committee meeting

Mark Benton

Justice committee  For a single person, it's about $1,400 a month.

May 2nd, 2017Committee meeting

Mark Benton

Justice committee  For civil cases, it's typically a block of hours for particular levels of service.

May 2nd, 2017Committee meeting

Mark Benton

Justice committee  I can't give you this year's numbers—I just don't have them in my briefcase—but I can give you last year's numbers. Let me put the numbers aside and tell you that there is a federal-provincial contribution agreement that covers criminal law and immigration law. It is a relatively complicated formula that divides a fixed sum of money among the provinces.

May 2nd, 2017Committee meeting

Mark Benton