Public Safety committee  Thank you very much. I wasn't expecting to speak tonight. You'll notice that I did write my submission on the back of an envelope, and I hope that won't be held against the BC Civil Liberties Association because generally that's a negative thing. My name is Josh Paterson, and I

Public Safety committee  When you say “ministerial warrant”, I'm not sure what you mean.

Public Safety committee  We say that those are completely inadequate. That's the problem. In fact, there have been ministerial authorizations for the collection of data and metadata, and those are simply inadequate. That's one of the nubs of our legal challenge—

Public Safety committee  It's because, first of all, there's no transparency. It's because there's no third independent party who is looking at a request from the government to do something that actually violates the privacy rights of Canadians in quite a major way. When the government or an agent of the

Public Safety committee  We have a range of thoughts on oversight issues that we share with some other groups like Amnesty and the CCLA in Toronto, and we'd be happy to provide that, but in a nutshell, we're very much concerned about that. We're aware that the CSE is under a different ministry. Never min

Public Safety committee  Yes, something like that. That's been suggested by many people and it's agreed by professors Roach and Forcese and others. That's what we would see.

Justice committee  Thank you very much to the committee for its invitation. The BC Civil Liberties Association is the country's oldest and largest civil liberties and human rights legal organization. We work at the federal level and provincially to sustain, defend, extend, and uphold human rights

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Nicholson. I'm glad that some predecessors from the BCCLA were able to play a role in your early legal education. We've been around a long time. Speaking from the experience of B.C., I think what happened when there was less money for legal aid was that, as you've

Justice committee  Family law tends to take the first hit.

Justice committee  Well, certainly in British Columbia where we saw very significant cuts to legal aid starting in about 2002—I mean a real, significant gutting of the system—I think the government also made cuts in other areas at the time. In recent months we've seen a Supreme Court case about

Justice committee  That would be one way of doing it, setting up some legislation around that at the federal level. You may hear from provinces that they don't prefer that approach. I think there's a lot of scope for the federal government to exercise leadership in conversations, and in discussions

Justice committee  Thanks very much for the question. I can say what the Canadian Bar Association has had to say, which we subscribe to as well, and that is that essential legal needs are those needs or legal problems that put in jeopardy someone's liberty, personal safety, security, health, hous

Justice committee  It's a critical problem. I think a lot of the other problems flow from that. It's not just a question of saying let's throw more money at it. However, many of the problems that we could enumerate, such as the cut-off being too low or it being administered in one way or another th

Justice committee  As I said in my testimony, sir, certainly here in B.C. we look wistfully at the situation in Ontario, but folks in Ontario have been before you and I completely support their submission that they have a great deal of difficulty as well. If I were to say where within Canada I hope

Justice committee  I'm not sure it would exacerbate the funding problem. I think the bigger cost problem, and there have been studies to show this, is the cost that flows through the system to health care, to the criminal system, and to elsewhere in the system when a family law problem turns into a