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.

Justice committee  Exactly.

Justice committee  It's lower. I had a few examples.

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  I would say yes, in both cases. Some resources are not available to certain groups of people, especially in immigration cases, where language barriers exist. For example, a clinic with little resources cannot afford to advertise its services in 18 different languages. It has to s

Justice committee  That's a great question. I certainly won't say that the federal government can't provide more support, but I don't want to alienate my colleagues in Quebec who are responsible for legal aid, either. Being mindful of both jurisdictions, I will say that transparency isn't all that