Report author says legal aid “in crisis” in B.C.

by Stephen Thomson on November 9th, 2010 at 3:40 PM

A women’s rights advocate is calling on the B.C. government to do more to help those who face financial barriers to accessing legal counsel.

“Between 2001 and 2010, the number of legal-aid cases approved for legal representation in family law went from over 15,000 to just over 6,000,” Kasari Govender, legal director of West Coast LEAF, told the Straight by phone. “Poverty-law services have been eliminated. Civil-law legal aid is really in crisis.

“What we’re advocating for is a rights-based system of legal aid, which means that everybody who can’t afford a lawyer without compromising their basic standard of living should be able to get counsel on matters where there’s human dignity at stake,” she said.

Concerns over the state of the province’s noncriminal legal-aid system are highlighted in a report released on November 9 by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and West Coast LEAF. Titled Rights-Based Legal Aid: Rebuilding B.C.’s Broken System, the paper shows that fewer legal-aid cases are receiving approval for lawyer representation and that five regional legal-aid centres have closed across B.C. in recent years.

A coauthor of the report, Govender also pointed out that the level of per-capita provincial-government spending on legal aid is lower here than in several other provinces. In B.C., the annual figure is around $12 per capita compared with more than $18 in Ontario.

The report’s authors are pushing for a legal-aid model that continues to include payment of private lawyers for services, as well as the establishment of a system of legal-aid clinics across the province and funding for lawyers to run clinics through existing community-based organizations.

“We have a right to access the justice system, and the justice system shouldn’t be only accessible to those who can afford to pay for it,” Govender said.

Neither the Ministry of Attorney General nor the B.C. Legal Services Society were available for comment by deadline.

Rights-Based Legal Aid: Rebuilding B.C.’s Broken System

Comments

4 Comments

glen p robbins

Nov 9, 2010 at 7:57pm

Most of the legal system needs to be fixed---paper shufflers and wordsmiths - a culture of dishonesty and lack of ethics.

We need a blowtorch not a broom.

justice must be a right for all

Nov 9, 2010 at 11:21pm

Unless you have millions and can buy justice, you're out of luck. How did we get to this point?

cuz

Nov 10, 2010 at 1:10pm

We got to this point because we have absolutely no voice when it comes to the legal system in Canada. Judges are selected from an elitist group of people who hardly ever suffer as victims because they live in neighborhoods that are well protected. Judges have no accountability for their insane rulings. We should be allowed to vote on judges so that the ones who cozy up to criminals can be thrown out in favor of judges who really want to protect the working people of British Columbia. The judges should reflect the will of the majority of residents, not just the views of their country club friends. Criminals around the world know the Canadian "justice" system is a joke.