Access to Justice

From Kamloops This Week:

As duty-counsel job action continues, B.C.’s attorney general is looking to alternative revenue sources to top up legal-aid funding.

On Monday, Mike de Jong met with members of the Kamloops Bar Association, which has been withholding duty-counsel services since January to protest the closure of the local legal-aid office.

Due to increased financial pressures, the Legal Services Society (LSS), which handles legal-aid referrals across the province, is closing five regional offices, including Kamloops, on March 31.

“I don’t want to pretend everyone left saying we solved all the problems,” de Jong told KTW after the meeting.

“But we have agreed on some of the things we need to do to move forward, identify where some of these solutions might lie and where we might begin to identify some additional resources.”

The office closure goes beyond one issue, he said, and has been exacerbated by the fact the LSS relies in part on interest-based sources of funding from the Law Foundation and the Notary Foundation.

“And with the interest-rate drop, that funding has all but dried up,” he said.

The society receives the bulk of its funding from the province — about $66 million this year — but a significant amount comes from the other sources.

However, de Jong said the government cannot increase funding while trying to balance the budget.

“At a time when we’re struggling with a $1.7-billion deficit, the province hasn’t been in a position to step forward and make up the difference — therein lies the challenge.”

What it boils down to, he said, is the need to find alternate sources of revenue.

One idea de Jong suggested is to ensure all fines and sanctions are taxed.

“The judge has the option to apply that surcharge — maybe that’s a source,” he said.

“That’s new incremental revenue we could draw on that doesn’t simply take from elsewhere in the budget.”

However, nothing is definite at this point and, in the meantime, an agent has been appointed to look after legal-aid issues.

De Jong said there are two dozen communities in B.C. served through an agency model.

“When confronted with limited resources — and when Legal Services Society believes it can help more people by going to an agency model — in these difficult times, that’s what we’re going to opt to do.”