Justice committee  Thank you.

Justice committee  Yes. It goes in conjunction with what I just said. The need for legal aid comes with the legislation that sets the obligations of a citizen, whether criminal, immigration, etc. Facing the government's decision to adopt a certain piece of legislation, a citizen has a need for lega

Justice committee  We don't have hourly rates. As Mr. Aucoin mentioned, if you go into a preliminary inquiry— it's actually a bail hearing— for a Quebec lawyer, it's $150. For an Ontario lawyer, it's $218. For a B.C. lawyer, it's $250. You see it's 40% more in B.C. for the same kind of work, and

Justice committee  I don't want to make a mistake. I could come back to give you the exact answer.

Justice committee  No. First I would be very glad if politicians would campaign to give more money to lawyers, but I don't think that's going to be the case in the near future.

Justice committee  The competition has been great in Quebec because it has enabled the public system and the private system to be efficient. The goal that was set at the outset of the regime in 1972 was to enable private lawyers to continue to do this mandate for the public body—not taking care of

Justice committee  And it's not hourly based, and that's an incentive. If the client's not ready to plead guilty, the lawyer will make an analysis and consider whether to take the file, because if the lawyer has to invest a lot of time, as Mr. Aucoin did in the example he gave, it might not be wort

Justice committee  Exactly.

Justice committee  No, not necessarily.

Justice committee  They make the calculation.

Justice committee  You don't want incentives in the system where the lawyer—

Justice committee  —will calculate which mandates he will take and which mandates he won't.

Justice committee  Let me clarify what I meant. The responsibility for legal aid is something I link to the legislator who makes the legislation.

Justice committee  So, summary conviction is a shared responsibility. Some penal offences come from the provincial governments and some from the federal government, so it's shared.

Justice committee  That's what I meant.