An independent panel of experts is recommending sweeping reforms to Quebec’s administration of the legal aid system to simplify the process to seek legal aid and alleviate the administrative encumbrances faced by private sector lawyers who take on legal aid mandates.
The experts, while affirming Quebec’s decentralized legal aid model because it ensures the independence of staff counsel and “respects” regional diversity, are nevertheless calling for a “paradigm” shift that would be anchored by the introduction of a secure digital platform to help establish a province-wide one-stop shop to receive, process and manage legal aid applications.
After three years of negotiations, the Quebec government and the provincial bar association reached an agreement to raise legal fees and to establish an independent working group that will conduct an exhaustive review of the tariff structure.
The agreement, widely perceived to be a “step in the right direction” by the Quebec legal community, calls for a five per cent retroactive increase in legal aid fees for the period of October 2017 to May 2019, and a 14.7 per cent increase in fees from June 2019 to September 2022.
The Quebec government increased legal aid eligibility thresholds by 6.67 per cent, but that’s not good enough, asserts to the Quebec Bar.
The surging number of unrepresented litigants trying to navigate the complex demands of law and procedure may leave legislators with little choice but to review and enact simplified rules of practice to make justice more accessible, said the chief justice of Quebec’s Superior Court at a conference examining the disturbing trend.
The figures are alarming, with an average of 37 per cent of parties representing themselves in civil matters before Quebec Superior Court, revealed Judge François Rolland. In divorce cases before Quebec Superior Court, 36 per cent of Quebecers are unrepresented litigants, a figure that rises to 42.1 per cent in family matters dealing with child custody and separation. Almost 42 per cent of parties appealing a sentence in criminal matters before Quebec Superior Court are unrepresented litigants while 38.8 per cent of individuals facing a motion that could authorize their psychiatric treatment do not have legal representation, prompting Justice Rolland to remark that if anybody “should be represented it seems to me it’s the treatment cases.”