Justice committee  If that were a recommendation I could have made an hour ago, I would have done so. I think it's actually quite important, and it has been well documented. As we have the discussion about how access to justice works, it's going to work better the more we pay attention to what peop

Justice committee  I mentioned earlier that the Association of Legal Aid Plans had gotten together with CBA and identified benchmarks, and I can provide those to you. It wasn't possible for me to talk to you about them meaningfully in 10 minutes, but they are important and valuable, and designed to

Justice committee  I think that part of the piece.... Mr. Nicholson's questions alluded to this earlier, in terms of where the provinces are going to be on this if you're going to say.... Is it “We just want more money; leave it to us to spend”? I think, in fairness, that's often what everybody's h

Justice committee  I've done legal aid for 30 years. I've had lots of indigenous clients, and I have run this plan, so I am accountable for this for the last 12 years. I was surprised that we were getting such a consistent.... Oh, sorry, and I'm a lawyer. I said that I think it's because we're law

Justice committee  Yes. I think one-size-fits-all only works for toques in Canada. I think we need to tailor justice to local circumstance. It's a terrific example. Those large criminal cases, which virtually no Canadians can afford to defend, are often publicly funded for the very reason that you'

Justice committee  I think, Mr. Duvall, I'd have to put it in the framework of the attorney general of the day, who felt strongly that it wasn't appropriate for the province to fund people to have lawyers to argue in court about custody, access, and division of assets. He was quite clear about that

Justice committee  If there's money available in a given year, my managers will have discretion to grant additional resources. We're one of the plans that has a capped budget. We cannot run a deficit, so they run it that way. Typically, what happens is that sometimes clients go without lawyers.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  The provincial government decided to no longer fund traditional models of family legal aid and instead to fund only emergency levels of service.

Justice committee  That was a political decision. The literature on legal aid funding indicates that it's typically a political decision. It's the only way they can explain why things vary so much. Even within Canada, the variation in per capita funding for legal aid is substantial, but nary 100%.

Justice committee  I think it's important that in Canada we have high levels of consistency in our justice system, and legal aid is an important component of that. In Canada, we have a standard framework for what judges are paid. We do a number of things that make sense in the scheme of things, b

Justice committee  One of the things that happens is that you get an awful lot of people in court without lawyers and with serious legal problems that go unresolved, and that tends to push up health and social service costs. There's quite a bit of social science in that area right now. Mr. Duvall

Justice committee  I can't give you this year's numbers—I just don't have them in my briefcase—but I can give you last year's numbers. Let me put the numbers aside and tell you that there is a federal-provincial contribution agreement that covers criminal law and immigration law. It is a relativel

Justice committee  I can certainly provide the details of what's paid.

Justice committee  There are 13, one for each province and territory. In British Columbia, the levels are based on the market basket measure of poverty set by Statistics Canada. It's the most generous of the standards outside of the territories. In the territories, they tend to be more generous.