• History of Legal Aid Cuts
• LSS Cuts of 2009
• Justice For All? Documentary

Many who work within the justice system in British Columbia are very concerned over the recent announcement of the closure of most of the Legal Services Society legal aid offices and additional devastating reductions to B.C.'s already severely under-funded legal aid system.  

The November 3, 2009 announcement that the LawLINE and all but two of the regional Legal Services Society offices shut down at the end of March 2010 will have a negative effect on BC communities, in particular upon low income women and men in the criminal and family justice system. This cut is on top of significant cuts to legal aid in BC since 2002.

Jump to a section:

• Summary of cuts
• Closure of the LSS regional offices
• Loss of Non-Emergency family legal aid
• The end of Extended Services for lengthy family cases and for change of counsel
• The elimination under the child apprehension tariff of Alternative Dispute Resolution
• Loss of coverage for Committal Hearings
• Family duty counsel services cut and over-run
• The Elimination of the LawLINE
• Cuts to POVNET, TRAC, and BCCPD
• Summary

The November 3rd announcement follows extensive cuts to legal aid services in 2008/2009:

1. The elimination of the Non-Emergency Family Tariff
2. The severe reduction of Extended Services to cover allow lawyers to prepare for lengthy family cases
3. The removal under the child apprehension tariff of Alternative Dispute Resolution Services, to resolve matters out of court
4. The loss of coverage for Committal Hearings in family court, leaving low-income persons in jail under the committal hearing process unable to get a lawyer or any legal representation
5. Cuts to Family Duty Counsel in small towns and urban centers outside of the Lower Mainland
6. The loss of coverage for breach charges in criminal court, even where crown is seeking jail time;
7. Cuts (reductions) to the SCAP program (coverage for long criminal trials).
8. The elimination of the LawLINE and of LSS’s contribution to POVNET
9. Significant cuts to outreach and education services through out BC vis-à-vis significant cuts at LSS head office
10. The closure of family law clinics in Vancouver and Surrey, and the Nanaimo Justice Access Center, which provided both civil and family law assistance
11. Significant cuts to Immigration law funding
12. Cuts in funding to TRAC (Tenant Resource & Advisory Centre) and BCCPD (BC Coalition of People with Disabilities)

All of this is on top of a 40% funding reduction by LSS between 2002 and 2004 that:

1. Closed 85% of the legal aid offices throughout BC, including the elimination of rural Community Law offices which used to provided a wide range of legal aid services in many small towns and cities, including in remote areas
2. Cut the LSS budget from 90 million to 55 million and resulted in the cut of legal aid staff from 460 to 155 (a 75% staff reduction)
3. Wiped out all legal aid Poverty Law services
4. Eliminated all assistance for Human Rights complaints
5. Targeted Family Law for harsh reductions by cutting family law by 60% (from 22 million to 9 million), eliminated the Non-Emergency Tariff, and significantly reduced eligibility, thus wiping out any real legal assistance to thousands of low income persons

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The Kamloops LSS Office is one of six that closed March 26, 2010

When the Regional LSS offices closed its doors in March 2010, legal aid applicants were left with provincial call centre toll-free number that is next to impossible to get through to and a local agent that may be underfunded*.  LSS is not prepared to provide the agent with enough funding to hire the equivalent 3.6 full time staff positions** that currently process legal aid applications at the Kamloops LSS Regional office, unless the staff work for low wages, or less staff are hired.

Many low income legal aid applicants do not have a land line phone. Most either have no phone at all or a pay-per-minute cellular phone with a limited number of minutes. They cannot afford to be left on hold for the amount of time it takes to get though to the call centre. There are no free telephones at any courthouses throughout B.C.  

Unfortunately, severely reduced access to legal aid in turn results in delays in getting a lawyer and unnecessary adjournments, which in turn creates further delays in family and criminal remand courts.  When courts become bogged down with unnecessary delays, this negatively affects everyone in court, which in turn adds to the overall costs of the justice system. 

Non-Emergency family legal aid was one of the first tariff items singled out for elimination by the provincial government oversight committee that orchestrated legal aid cuts in B.C. in 2002. This item was later briefly brought back in a very limited form for a few years, but then cut again in 2009.

Under the Non-Emergency tariff, indigent persons who had difficulty completing court documents could get limited assistance by having a lawyer complete their forms, assist with filing fees, and attend family case conference or mediations with them, in an effort to resolve matters fairly and without going to trial. Since this tariff item was eliminated earlier this year, many family litigants, most of whom are low-education women living in poverty, have been unable to resolve property issues, pursue adequate child and spousal support, or properly defend themselves in a family action.   

The net result has been than the spouse who has money to pay for a lawyer is able to get court orders leaning in their favor, such as court orders that give them a greater share of or control over family property and assets, and orders that do not make them pay sufficient child or spousal support. In many cases, the other spouse simply gives up because they can not get any legal help. 

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Under Extended Services, lawyers attending lengthy and difficult trials could ask LSS to compensate them for some of the extra preparation time needed. Under the regular Emergency family tariff, lawyers are only paid a small number of hours for preparation. Once those hours were used up, lawyers could ask LSS for additional preparation hours under Extended Services or ask LSS to refer the matter to a different lawyer, who would then receive their own preparation time hours. 

With the loss of Extended Services, family lawyers will no longer be able to ask LSS to get paid for preparation for lengthy court proceedings. This means in long and difficult cases, lawyers will either have to agree to work long hours pro bono or the client will have to represent her/himself. If the lawyer decides he or she cannot afford to work for free and asks LSS to cancel the legal aid referral, the client will not be able to get another lawyer to continue the case, as LSS will now not provide a second lawyer, except in rare cases. 

LSS very recently announced it is anticipating bringing back a limited form of Extended Services, but no start date has been provided for the return of this item, and it is unknown what the eligibility requirements will be or how many lawyers and their clients will be able to access it.

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The elimination of alternative dispute resolution coverage has taken away a valuable tool that family lawyers could access to speedily resolve child apprehension matters outside of court proceedings. Family lawyers at alternative dispute resolution meetings used to be able to work with clients and social workers to resolve matters both before going to court and to reduce the amount of court time needed. The net result was lengthy court trials were often avoided and children spent less time in foster care. Now this valuable tool for keeping matters out of court has been cut by LSS. While mediation is still available, it can take weeks or months to arrange a mediator for remote rural communities outside of the Lower Mainland.

LSS very recently announced it is bringing back Alternative Dispute Resolution, but no start date has been provided for the return of this item, and it is unknown if it will provide the same coverage as before the cuts.

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There is now no legal aid available for indigent persons facing an indefinite term of imprisonment in family court under the Committal Hearing procedure. When one party in a family case is receiving social assistance, Family Maintenance Enforcement Program (FMEP) takes legal action to collect child and spousal support from the other party in family court. If the payor parent falls significantly behind in payments, FMEP frequently asks the court to make an order that the payor parent be incarcerated under the Committal Hearing process. With the cut of this item, the state will be pursuing indefinite periods of incarceration for indigent parents at the same time that the state refuses to provide a lawyer for them. Low income persons facing jail should always qualify for legal aid. 

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Fernie is one of the affected small communities

The only family legal advice service that is now available is a limited summary advice service available through family duty counsel, a service that has become overrun in many parts of the Province. In many urban centers, family duty counsel are often unable to cope with the volume of work and usually not able to provide more than 5 to 10 minutes of advice to each person they meet with. This is due to the large and ever increasing numbers of unrepresented litigants needing help in family court, because these persons have no where else to turn to, due to the lack of adequate legal aid in British Columbia.   

In rural communities, family duty counsel has recently been cut back from 7 hours to 3 hours of service, and in some towns, the number of duty counsel provided has been reduced from two lawyers to one lawyer. It is difficult for clients to get any real legal assistance when duty counsel is only available for three hours on Provincial Court family list days. Family court list days take place any where from twice a month to only one day every six weeks, depending on the size of the rural community. As with larger urban centers duty counsel is overrun.

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The LawLINE was cut in March 2010. The LawLINE provided, via telephone, poverty law advice and summary assistance to indigent persons on a wide variety of topics, such as housing, welfare, employment insurance benefits. There is nothing available in the Province of BC to replace this service when it is gone. Persons who cannot afford a consultation with a lawyer will now be left with no resources to turn to.

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LSS has recently cut it’s contribution to Povnet, reducing Povnet’s income by about 33%.

LSS used to distribute Tenant Resource & Advisory Centre (TRAC)publications at an estimated cost of $8,000/year. In early 2009, LSS told TRAC they could no longer distribute TRAC publications.

The BC Coalition of People with Disabilities (BCCPD) also received an annual grant of $12,000 for publications from LSS. In 2009, LSS advised BCCPD that this grant was no longer available for the next fiscal year.

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The above cuts to legal aid put women at risk of further violence, poverty, and dependence on social assistance. The lack of family law legal aid contributes to child poverty and costs our society in all of our social services. At present LSS has cut the very programs intended to try to fill the gaps created by the massive funding cuts in 2002. In many cases, women cannot afford a lawyer at all, especially because abuse in intimate relationships also frequently involves financial abuse. These additional funding cuts will put thousands of women and their children in an extremely vulnerable position.

In 2007 Canada and British Columbia were criticized by the United Nations for failing to meet international obligations to ensure that women have equal access to the justice system. While the government of British Columbia argues that funding hasn't been reduced, the provincial government controls a large part of the funding for the Legal Services Society and has a legal responsibility to fulfill the right to equal and adequate access to justice. 

Thanks to some of the worst cuts to legal aid in the history of Canada, the government of British Columbia has now created two justice systems. There is one system for those who can afford a lawyer, and one for those who cannot. Those who cannot afford a lawyer and who can no longer get legal aid face a greater likelihood of going to jail, losing their trial, being evicted, losing out on benefits, losing out on property division, and support, and losing their children.

Notes:

* Kamloops LSS Regional has 2.6 persons processing applications and about 1.0 persons providing reception support to legal aid applicants, hence about 3.6 persons are providing service to legal aid applicants.

** 3.6 staff persons would cost the agent at least $100,000.00 for wages, leaving only about $24,000.00 for the agent to pay for office rent and overhead such as computers, and to pay her/himself.