Legal aid is a problem child. It doesn’t matter which province you’re in or what type of law you practise, if legal aid is part of your legal business, it’s not easy. The system is straining at the seams, some might even say it’s broken beyond repair (See our cover story on page 28). And there are no shortage of reports and studies over the last decades that have suggested ways to fix it. Mostly, those recommendations are collecting dust on the shelves of attorneys general’s offices across this fine country. According to the Canadian Bar Association’s report on legal aid released in July, “Despite lobbying and litigation efforts, there have been no significant systemic improvements in access to justice in Canada during the last four decades.”
Funding is not keeping up with the needs of Canadians for legal assistance in either the criminal law or civil law streams. Lawyers are doing more and more pro bono work but that is not the solution to what ails legal aid. As part of its ongoing transformation, Legal Aid Ontario closed regional offices while redirecting certificate applicants to toll-free numbers and web sites. The province’s Justice on Target project aims to decrease the number of pretrial appearances, but lawyers say long waits for certificates, resulting from the new application procedures, are producing the opposite effect. B.C. has also revamped, or rather been forced to cut, its legal aid system. In that province, another commission has been set up to look at where legal aid stands and where it’s going. Will this too result in a series of recommendations that get no action?
In some provinces there is a bit of good news. Legal Aid Manitoba reports that its mixed-use system of staff lawyers and the private bar is working out quite well. In some cases it’s more efficient to use staff lawyers and in others more cost-effective to use outside lawyers via the certificate process. But even that’s not perfect.
In order to get the legal aid house in order (even by a little bit), there does have to be more government funding but also a public awareness campaign. Probably one of the biggest hurdles faced by the profession in its legal aid battle is fighting the perception that legal aid money (i.e. Average Joe’s tax dollars) goes to help criminals. Perhaps it’s time lawyers started demanding that their law societies put some of their members’ fees into a campaign to change those perceptions. Public support can move governments to provide funding. And in the end, it is both in the public’s as well as the profession’s interest to improve the shabby legal aid system across this country.
