Status of Women committee  From my memory of when the report was produced, it was in a state of flux. Some announcements had been made. The provincial government had received the money and it was unclear exactly what was going to happen to it provincially. That's why today we were really focused on attachi

Status of Women committee  That's right. I don't know that we have the international comparison since that, but what I can say is that we met with the provincial minister responsible for child care in B.C., and those decisions are still very much in flux about what that's going to look like. We have some

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. We originally had built in a piece about that and pulled it out because of time. That is absolutely something we are advocating for. As you know, there's kind of a range, around five or 10 days, that has been developed across the different provinces. What we hear ane

Status of Women committee  Ultimately, if a woman is dealing with all of those different pieces at the same time, probably all aspects will be suffering. She'll be struggling to find housing. She'll be struggling to keep her job. If she's taking time off from work and that isn't built into leave, then she

Status of Women committee  There's simply no question about it. Again, think about all these obstacles in her way as she leaves the relationship. Where there are additional obstacles, where she has accessibility challenges, where she is trying to find a transition home that might take her—one that's access

Status of Women committee  That's right.

Status of Women committee  That's why we are suggesting that the federal government engage in a consultation on this. It's not something that's been deeply discussed and it's a fairly new.... Actually, when we worked through this for this presentation, it's not something that we've done a lot of talking ab

Status of Women committee  Thank you for that. We have both got our work cut out for us and we will definitely add that to our list in terms of further advocacy that we do on this issue.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. We are very pleased at the renewal of the court challenges program. It is, as you know, focused on systemic change, so it doesn't address directly these issues of change on the ground. West Coast LEAF is bringing litigation against the provincial government right now

Status of Women committee  I think he's referring to child support.

Status of Women committee  That's a good question. We haven't done that economic analysis. In terms of the advocacy, there's certainly a lot of advocacy happening in this province around access to justice, and there is some variance in answering that question. The one organization that has put forward a co

Status of Women committee  I would urge the federal government to focus on legal aid as opposed to pro bono. I say that with no disregard for pro bono. It's actually a really important part of the access to justice picture, but I think we have a very robust pro bono culture in the bar in Canada. There is m

Status of Women committee  Thank you very much for your time here today.

Status of Women committee  Thank you for having us here today. We're very pleased to be part of this study and to have the chance to make our submissions to you. I'll start by telling you a bit about West Coast LEAF. Then I'm going to delve into talking about the impact of access to justice and legal aid

Justice committee  I would say maybe one thing, which is that there's a tiny silver lining to the cuts in legal aid in B.C., because other services have grown up to try to cover the gap. They haven't done that, but if we had legal aid back, it would provide a much more fulsome system than we had be