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

Justice committee  I mentioned in my introductory comments that one of the problems is that the number has been pushed farther and farther down in most jurisdictions in Canada as a result of current levels of funding. Back in the early eighties, it was common for legal aid to ask if you could affo

Justice committee  Yes, caps on the number of hours are common. About half the plans in Canada rely on staff lawyer programs, so they are managed in a different way. Those plans that use private lawyers—B.C., Alberta, and Ontario—tend to have a fixed number of hours. Sometimes they're staged. Some

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

Justice committee  Between criminal and civil...?

Justice committee  Criminal services tend to be paid on a block tariff level. You would get so much for a trial or so much for a half-day of trial. Partly, there's a commonality among them. They just tend to be slightly different business models. Lawyers practising criminal law tend to be more us

Justice committee  I do, and I agree, particularly when we look at the variations in indigenous cultures in Canada. Frankly, it's basically what the Gladue reports are reporting on. They'd have to be developed in different ways. At the same time, the concern I'm expressing to you is that it is pr

Justice committee  First of all, I think that tune is a well-worn tune that everybody knows the words to. It's the common tune and continues to be the common tune. I think this issue, and I'm speaking from a legal aid perspective rather than a provincial government perspective—

Justice committee  For example, in Nova Scotia it's the judges who develop and pay for the Gladue reports. In B.C., it's the legal aid plan. In Ontario, the legal aid plan does it through friendship centres. There are a variety of different approaches. Of course, I'm one of those folks who sings t

Justice committee  Thank you very much. Committee members, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to speak broadly about legal aid in Canada. I will speak briefly to some issues of indigenous access to justice, which legal aid plans are working on right now, and I would welcome any questions more broadl