Ontario report recommends lowering barriers that restrict access to justice

Good summary in the Star of the legal aid report released yesterday. The Attorney General has been quite proactive on legal aid and streamlining the system to make it more efficient (a task necessary but far from easy) so it's pretty sure he'll go through the report with care.

The trouble is that funding is a problem and you could double legal aid's budget and still see shortfalls. Hence the need for some fundamental reform of the justice system -- but that's for another post.

Here's an excerpt of the Star's story.

Joseph Hall and Tracey Tyler
The Toronto Star , July 26, 2008

The middle class should have access to Ontario's legal aid program and lawyers who work in the system should be paid considerably more.

Those are two of seven key recommendations released yesterday in a
sweeping report into the province's government-funded legal aid program,
established more than 40 years ago with the promise of ensuring justice for all, yet now struggling to serve even the poor.

While legal aid was introduced with the neediest citizens in mind, access to justice for the broader middle class has become a serious problem, with one high-profile judge after another, including Ontario Chief Justice Warren Winkler, calling it the most pressing issue facing
the justice system.

A simple three-day civil trial costs about $60,000, more than a year's salary for many families, who can't afford to pay for a lawyer but would still be considered too well-off for legal aid.

"The financial eligibility criteria are so restrictive that it is only the very poor that qualify for most forms of legal aid," said Michael Trebilcock, a University of Toronto law professor who wrote the report for Ontario's attorney general.

Eligibility criteria must be "significantly raised to a more realistic level" and, perhaps in some cases, scrapped altogether, he argued.

"Some range of legal aid services should be provided to all Ontario citizens on a non-means tested basis ... so that middle-class Ontarians develop a material stake in the well-being of the legal aid system."

In addition to opening the system so the middle class could, at minimum, have access to basic legal advice, information and assistance could also be offered through alternatives such as telephone hotlines, the report proposes.