Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Yes, Mr. Chair. The benchmarks call for people who live at or below 150% of the low-income measure to be considered to be financially disadvantaged. That is found at the StatsCan website. There's a reference there in our report.

Justice committee  I'm just thinking here. I'm looking at Ontario, which is where my experience is. Coverage has dropped over the years, frankly, and I can't think at this point of a single instance of a service that ought not to be covered.

Justice committee  Yes, I agree with Mr. Fowler's approach. He's quite right that it's black and white. You qualify or you don't. In Ontario, there are some contribution agreements, which you referred to. These would be for people who qualify from an income point of view, but they have some assets

Justice committee  Yes, I see merit in it. I know that in some cases, when both clients are represented by legal aid, the legal aid service will act as a mediator to bring them together. That only makes sense. I think, however, that we can go further than that. In the court system generally there

Justice committee  You hit my sweet spot there, Mr. Cooper, especially when you mentioned law students, because that's what I do. I think there is definitely more scope for the involvement of law students in the civil system, particularly in family law, which is where the need is the greatest. My

Justice committee  I think that there is a moral role to play here. The federal government is the protector of Canadians' rights. There are so many issues that come before the federal government that have been given priority and this one has not. I think this has to be given a top priority by the D

Justice committee  That came into being, just last year, in 2015.

Justice committee  Not at this point, sir.

Justice committee  If I can add one more thing, Mr. Fowler mentioned judges and the other thing the federal government could do is to work on more unified family courts in Canada. I think that would save a lot of confusion and create more efficiencies.

Justice committee  Lawyers charge based on the market, right? They take what the market can bear, but one of the reasons the costs are so high is that they are part of the system and the system has built-in delays. It takes too long, so that's why lawyers' fees go up. I think if we could somehow si

Justice committee  I think that the funding should model.... I wouldn't link civil to criminal, personally. I think we need to come to that agreement I talked about with the provinces. You have to set the benchmarks. What is the income of the people you're going to provide legal aid to? Make an est

Justice committee  Civil legal aid should cover what we call “essential legal needs”. My colleague has it here, if I may refer to our report, “Essential legal needs are legal problems or situations that put into jeopardy a person or a person’s family’s liberty, personal safety and security, health,

Justice committee  That's correct. They have a national partnership agreement on legal assistance services and it's an agreement between the federal government and the states and territories of Australia.

Justice committee  It comes down to priorities. The provinces have been under a lot of pressure to fund health care and education, in particular, and as a result, the justice system has not been given a priority. We're operating now, members, with a 20th-century or even a 19th-century court system