 The Honourable Mr. Justice Tom Cromwell, Professor Trevor Ferrell, Ms. Emma Halpern, and President Dan Campbell. What a lineup. I would come to see any of them speak independently, but to put the four into one panel inspired. We are, without question, in for a treat. Welcome to the Schulich School of Law. We're delighted that you're able to join us here this evening or this afternoon, and we're delighted to be hosting this year's F.B. Wickwire Memorial Lecture in Professional Responsibility and Legal Ethics with the Nova Scotia Barrister Society. I'm Kim Brooks, the Dean at the School. I'm delighted that this lecture, named in honor of Ted Wickwire, the man who received his L.O.B. degree here in 1962, is still housed here at the school. First, the lecture honors a man who worked tirelessly to ensure that lawyers maintained a level of uncompromised professionalism. We are fittingly proud of his contributions to the legal academy, the university, and the profession. You can read more about those contributions on your invitation card. Second, this lecture reflects an ongoing relationship between the school and the Nova Scotia Barrister Society. Speaking for the school, that relationship is one that enhances significantly the richness of our program and people, and it informs daily our understanding of law, legal education, and the legal profession. Finally, let me say that I'm proud to have a lecture that focuses on professional responsibility and legal ethics here at the faculty. We house the leading scholars in this country on this substantive topic, with the exception of course of Osgoode, which houses Trevor Farrow, and within our far too leaky walls of the school. Our students have had a required course on this topic for years and discussed issues of ethics and professionalism pervasively during their time at the school. Without more than let me turn the floor over to Dan Campbell. To the panel, thank you. To the audience, enjoy. Thank you Dean Brooks. I suppose I have the second easiest job after Richards. And thank you, thank you all for coming. This is a wonderful turnout to honor Ted Wickwire and to hear three very eminent and interesting speakers. It's fitting that we hold this annual lecture to honor Ted Wickwire, who contributed so much to our profession. I remember Ted as one of the lawyers I looked up to as a very young lawyer. He was a skillful advocate, an elegant advocate, always well prepared, always scrupulously fair, always sound and judgment. But in addition to his professional skill, he had a dedication to professionalism, to service and to ethics. And the biographical note in your program sets out just some of the ways that he served his community and his profession. Most pertinent to the topic of our lecture today, he led the development of the Nova Scotia Barrister Society Handbook on Ethics and Professional Conduct. And he contributed greatly to the establishment of the Ethics and Professional Conduct Program here at, well, at what was then the Housley Law School. Ted would have been very interested in the topic we're discussing today. He had a great interest in access to justice, although that's not a phrase that we used much back then. He was a leader of the Bar Society's Volunteer Legal Program in the days before legal aid, and he was the first chair of the Legal Aid Commission. So I'm delighted to welcome you to these presentations by three distinguished speakers on a topic that would have been of great interest to the man that we're honoring. Our speakers today are Justice Tom Cromwell of the Supreme Court of Canada, Ms. Emma Halpern, Equity Officer of the Nova Scotia Barrister Society, and Professor Trevor Farrell of Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. Brief biographical note is in your program, so we'll dispense with introductions. I'll call first on Justice Cromwell, who is well known to us from his fondly remembered days in this building and on the bench of our Court of Appeal. And in addition to his day job now at the Supreme Court of Canada, Justice Cromwell is chair of the Action Committee on Access to Civil and Family Justice. Justice Cromwell. Thank you very much, Dan. I don't think I've ever heard Richard speak better, I don't know. I think it was Richard that when I was appointed to the Court of Appeal from the law faculty quipped that my appointment had enriched the intellectual atmosphere of both places. So I vote him one for a long time. Anyway, let me just first of all add a word to what President Campbell said about Mr. Rick Weyer. He of course was a very senior and prominent lawyer when I was a very junior and far from prominent law professor in this building. And he treated everyone with tremendous respect and at least feigned interest in everyone's opinions. I'm sure he was feigning interest in mind, but he really had a manner of engaging with people that was tremendous regardless of their status in the legal hierarchy. He was, of course, a huge supporter of Dalhousie serving for many, many years on our board of governors. And he was a huge supporter of the law school. And I think of Ted particularly in connection with our efforts in the mid-1980s to try to bring the faculty to give more attention to the subject of professional responsibility. And Brent Cotter and I helped organize a conference in this room on that subject. And Ted Weyer was a big supporter and really encouraged us in our efforts to have more emphasis on that area of teaching and scholarship in the law faculty. And I think his support and influence was very important. And as Dan said, it may have been that Ted Weyer did not use the words access to justice as such, but he certainly lived them through his work with legal aid and through his insistence on the highest standards of professional conduct. So it's a tremendous honor to have known him in the first place and of course a huge honor to have been invited to take part in this lecture series in his memory. So thank you very much for the invitation. I've discovered after I guess almost 15 years as a judge that normally judges are treated with considerable respect and even occasionally with deference. But there are some sometimes humorous exceptions. And for example, there was a young lawyer who was arguing a rather obvious point in court and the judge grew impatient. He said, you know, you don't need to keep going over that. He said, I'm not a complete idiot. And the young counsel who was a little taken aback said, I'm sorry, my Lord, I didn't realize that. And then there was the plaintiff in a defamation action and her counsel was leading her through her evidence and said, now I'd like you to repeat exactly what the defendant said. And the woman started blushed and said, it really isn't something that should be said to a respectable person. Counsel said, then just whisper it to the judge. So sometimes it has its amusing moments. I'd like to kick this discussion on access to justice off by touching very quickly on four points. First of all, just to say a word about what is access to justice, how would we how would we know if we had it? Second of all, I'm going to suggest three key components to any approach to improving access to justice. I'm going to report very, very briefly on some of our work in the action committee on access to civil and family justice and then conclude with a couple of remarks about what the Academy and the practicing bar might be able to do to help the situation. And I promise that none of that is going to take more than about 12 or 15 minutes because I know Dan has got the stopwatch running in the hook ready. And having appeared before our court recently and had to sit down, the red light came on. I know he's up for retaliation. I don't even have the amber light to warn me here. But anyway, first of all, so what is access to justice? And I'm concentrating on family and civil justice. And I think we could put it into a sentence that people would have sufficient access to justice if they had the knowledge, the resources and the services to deal effectively with civil and family legal matters. And so I think, although that's a short sentence, there's I think quite a bit in it. But I just like to highlight the fact that this is not a court centric or litigation centric vision of what is access to justice. It's not only about lawyers or only about litigation or only about courts. And you know, sometimes what's needed for access to justice is a babysitter or a bus pass, not a more enriched self help program in the court. So I think we're trying to take a fairly broad view of what access to justice looks like and not trying to concentrate only on our formal processes, although of course they're vital and very important and central to access to justice. Second of all then to turn to what I would suggest are three key elements. And I can see some of your relief at the first point only took 10 or 15 seconds because I could see that you were thinking this is going to be a long afternoon. But the three key elements and this will be quick too. I would suggest there are three. One is engagement. The second is a strategic approach. And the third is a collaborative approach. And I'm just going to say a word about each engagement, I think is is critical. I think there are a lot of people very concerned about the state of access to justice in Canada, civil family criminal all along the way all across the board. But I think that what we where we have a lot of work to do is getting engagement. And by engagement I don't just mean ringing our hands collectively about it. By engagement I mean asking ourselves what can we do to improve access to justice. My experience pretty well across the country is that we're all really, really good at telling other people what they should be doing. The judges are really, really good at deciding that the government should do X, Y and Z. And the government's quite good at telling the judges what they should be doing or sometimes where they should be going. And the practicing bar tends to agree with both. But in any event what I think is where we need a lot of work done is we need to get everybody sitting back and saying, well, there's a huge problem. It's multi-sectoral problem. But what can we do in our sphere of influence and decision making? That's what I'm talking about by engagement. Not simply worrying about it, but actually starting to reflect on what we could do ourselves and what we could do in cooperation with others. Strategic approach. I had an excellent luncheon meeting over at the Bar Society today. And one of the expressions that was used, you know, this topic is a sinkhole. We could pour everything we have into this. And still there'd be a hole. And so I think I completely agree with the people who say what we need is a strategic approach. We need to identify some key things and do that and let other things go by the boards because it's such a huge topic that we really could spend all of our energy and all of our resources from now until the end of time and perhaps not feel we'd accomplish much. So I think a more strategic approach is very important. And then finally collaboration. This is something that I think is really big and needs to be worked on a lot in the justice system particularly and beyond. That as I mentioned before, I think we're all really good at diagnosing what other people are doing wrong. But we need to be, you know, the old physician heal thyself. I think we need to be looking at what we can do and then how we can work together. We still have a lot of silos in the justice system. And those silos have to be broken down or they at least have to communicate and collaborate more effectively. So those are my three key elements of a strategy to approach access to justice. Turning to my third point about the action committee on access to civil and family justice, this was set up by Chief Justice McLaughlin. And as I like to say, I was invited to chair it when I joined the Supreme Court. And I'm glad that I was because it's been a tremendous learning experience for me. What we have is a fairly high level national committee that's representative of just about every sector in the justice community, along with the member of the public. So we have a couple of deputy ministers, a couple of judges from both the federal and provincial systems. We have public legal education people. We have legal aid. We have court administration. We have legal scholars. Professor Farrow being our action committee scholar in residence. And so we really have, we have the pro bono people at the table. So we have a lot of experience around the table. And our job as we see it is to really try to foster that collaboration, that engagement and that strategic approach throughout the justice system. We've set up four working groups to correspond to what we've identified as four priority areas for work in the area of civil and family justice. And those four working groups are these. Access to legal services. I think number one on just about anybody's hit parade of things that we need in terms of improved access to justice that we need to get more people in touch with lawyers. You know, and we talk about all the strategies we have for self represented people. We talk about all the strategies we have to assist people with their legal issues and all of that's important. And I'm not in any way taking away from it. But you know, when there's a famine in the world, we don't advertise that we're going to teach people to eat less. You know, we don't that's not our main strategy. And I don't think that's our main strategy either in the area of people who need legal services. And so we have a very strong working group chaired by Mark Benton, who's the executive director of the Legal Services Society in British Columbia. Stick handling that group. We have strong representation from the Federation of Law Societies, who is now also set up a committee on this subject. We have strong representation from the Canadian Bar and so on. So a very important area. Second priority area court processes simplification. And we feel here that there are lots of things that could be done probably without rule changes in most cases to simplify and streamline people's experiences in the court. And if we can make a lawyer's bill for one hour instead of four to deliver the same service, we think that would be a contribution to access to justice. Third area, access to family justice. This seems to be a priority for just about everybody across the country. Some judges have told me that 70% of the people appearing before them in family matters are self represented. So we've got lots of lots of issues there. And fourthly, a working group on what we're calling triage prevention referral. And the idea of this group is to look at how we can initially get people to the services that they most need. Legal problems don't tend to come in isolation from other problems. And often legal problems are grouped together. And so there's a lot of work being done on how we can more effectively get the person to the services they need in a sensible order and prevention. A lot of times there may be ways to avoid the legal problem in the first place and we need to think more creatively about it. So those are our four priority areas. Each one has a strong working group. The first two groups, the access to legal services and the court process simplification have been running for about 18 months and they're going to do their final reports to our action committee meeting this June. The other two working groups, the family justice and the triage prevention referral, have just started over the last three or four months and they'll be working to a June 2013 time limit. So I hope you'll be hearing quite a bit more about especially those first two working groups later into the summer and into next fall. So can I just close these opening remarks then with a couple of thoughts about what the university and the legal profession the BAR can do and indeed are doing to help us improve access to justice. When we think about the university, I think we still believe that universities are built on the three pillars of teaching, research and service and we really don't need to say much at the Schulich School of Law about how the law school can contribute to access to justice in each of those three areas. In the teaching we certainly I think need more academic work on what is access to justice, what are the lessons of the past, how does professional responsibility relate to access to justice and what careers are available, what innovative ways of practicing may exist that will help provide young new lawyers with a good livelihood but will also make legal services more accessible to their community. So that's just an example of the kinds, some of examples I should say, of the kinds of things that can be done in the teaching area. Research, we certainly need lots more action oriented, quantitative research about our justice system and particularly our civil justice system and I know that Professor Farrow will be saying a word or two about a huge research project that he's involved with on the cost of justice and there's tons of room for work in just about every area of how our legal system actually functions and at Dalhousie again we certainly don't need to say anything about service, I see Donna Franey here in the front row, Dalhousie has a long and proud history of service to the community actually providing legal services and there's lots of room for that, I know pro bono students Canada's active on the campus at the Schulich School of Law, those are the kinds of things that I think law faculties can make a very meaningful contribution to access to justice through service to others. As for the bar, it seems to me that there is a professional responsibility element to the access to justice topic and that that operates at two levels I think there's a sort of an operational level of that professional responsibility and that's where we talk about things such as pro bono trying to perform legal services in a more cost-effective manner etc but there's also a more systemic side to the professional responsibility and that's working within the profession and cooperatively with other players in the justice system to improve things and I noted that you have recently adopted new a new code of professional conduct in Nova Scotia and I was interested that in the new article 4.06 it stated that a lawyer must encourage public respect for and try to improve the administration of justice and in the commentaries it's noted that a lawyer by training opportunity and experience is in a position to observe the workings and discover the strengths and weaknesses of laws legal institutions and public authorities a lawyer should therefore lead in seeking improvements in the legal system but any criticism and proposals should be bona fide and reason and I know that that from my lunch discussions that Emma will be telling you about some of the exciting things that the Nova Scotia bar is doing in this area so I'm very glad to have had the chance to be here to tell you a little bit about what we're trying to do in the action committee and to meet you and I know that Trevor and Emma will add quite a lot to our reflections on the topic thank you very much Emma Halpern is the equity officer of the Nova Scotia Barrister Society she works with our gender equity committee and our racial equity committee and has recently undertaken to coordinate our work in the general area of access to justice in my time on the executive of the bar society I've come to admire Emma's work she brings to her work enthusiasm yay passion and energy and knowledge so we'll look forward to her discussion of the work that she's been undertaking and what we've been finding oh I sitting up front you don't realize quite how many people are here there are seats up here too I know there's a few people up against the wall there's empty seats if you want to move up well thank you so much for the honor of being invited to participate in the annual Wicquire Memorial lecture I've been racking my brains all day trying to figure out how I ended up in the daunting position of having to follow Justice Cromwell who is not only brilliant but also extremely funny so true very funny but hey I can do is give you a bit of a picture of some of the access to justice or more specifically access to legal services work happening on the ground here in Nova Scotia so as in other regions of Canada the legal system and specifically legal services in Nova Scotia have become increasingly more difficult to access over the past number of years studies in Nova Scotia on the topic of self-representation and the provision of pro bono services have indicated that frontline court staff are seeing a greater number of self-represented litigants and local community organizations are fielding a significant increase in questions relating to the law the legal information society of Nova Scotia has noted an increase over the last few years in the number of callers who self-identify as being either self-represented or not represented and although the legal information society plays a crucial role in the provision of legal information they are increasingly being asked to provide information on legal processes forms and an array of justice system navigation that verges on the provision of legal advice so through my work at the equity office of the barrister society i've become acutely aware of the complexity of access to justice issues and i personally interact frequently with individuals who struggle to access legal services that meet their particular legal needs these struggles range from issues relating to one or a combination of the following factors residence in a particular community membership to a particular racial or cultural group and of course income so there are some communities in Nova Scotia where you may have to travel over a hundred kilometers to find a lawyer who can address your particular legal issue for example in a custody dispute in a small town involving a couple breaking up and a custody or access request from grandparents it is not uncommon that one party may have to seek a lawyer from a community a number of kilometers away when you factor in mobility and transportation issues this can become a significant barrier to access in how a fact we are increasingly hearing of situations of non-english speaking clients unable to find lawyers who speak their language and struggling to find interpreters that they can afford and even in some cases that they feel they can trust members of our first nations communities indicate that it is difficult to find legal services because so few lawyers are knowledgeable about Aboriginal law or the way in which Aboriginal law interacts with other areas of our law such as family, criminal, and wills in a state and in our african Nova Scotian community clients are unable often feel they're unable to retain a lawyer from their own communities and have had significant challenges finding lawyers who understand the historical and community complexities associated with the system of land grants that exist in the Preston communities and many other communities in the province and of course the affordability of legal services is one of the most significant barriers to access in fact the research undertaken in this province suggests that it is the working poor who generally don't qualify for legal aid and the middle class who face the greatest barriers when this becomes particularly challenging is in the area of family law a considerable number of Nova Scotians and lower income groups seek family services and despite really important advances in this area by legal aid to housing legal aid service the Department of Justice and Legal Information Society we're still seeing significant access issues so it is these social conditions and a movement to consider access to justice in law societies across the country that has led us at the society to begin to work both internally and with other organizations and institutions to address access to justice issues and in particular to articulate our role or our specific responsibility in this area over the past few years of the society we've embarked on a process to really to better understand our role we've considered our purpose which is to uphold and protect the public interest in the practice of law and we've also examined our role in seeking to improve the administration of justice which has a clearly articulated set of responsibilities under the new section 4 to D of the Legal Professions Act so some of the questions that we grappled with have included how does access to justice fit in with seeking to improve the administration of justice what is our responsibility and what is the responsibility of other organizations and what responsibilities do we share and we need to be working on together and finally given the scope and complexity of these issues what are the parameters or limitations that we can or should place on our role so through this process of self-examination on the part of the society I've come to the following conclusions effective access to justice is a crucial outcome of a justice system that is well administered and our specific responsibility is to improve the administration of legal services and to increase access to those services but when I speak of legal services the phrase should be understood broadly to encompass more than simply access to lawyers although I agree with Justice Cromwell that that is a crucial piece to this but also a consideration of other possible ways that legal information and advice can be provided such as increasing publicly accessible legal information that includes information on processes and services increase access to dispute resolution options and a number of other considerations in the equity office we've been working on access and initiatives that specifically support historically disadvantaged communities through increasing diversity within the bar and extending that representation to positions of power and influence we've also begun to work closely with a number of communities to try to develop a richer culture of legal empowerment through access to legal information and knowledge although we're deeply committed to this work at the society we do recognize that we can't do it alone and so there are many other organizations who share this responsibility therefore we focus much many of our efforts in the area of liaison and collaboration we meet regularly with officials from the department of justice community organizations member of the judiciary we glade the cba and others to discuss these issues and collaborate on programs and initiatives so through this collaborative partnership the access to justice working group was born and this working group has taken responsibility for a number of projects including the access to family justice website that will be launched in april of this year so this website which was sort of conceived through a collaborative partnership with all of these organizations is designed to be a central hub for family law information processes and services in Nova Scotia and to reduce unnecessary duplication or complication within the family law system it's our hope that this project will help people dealing with a family law issue to understand and navigate court processes and then it will also offer a number of alternatives to court to help people solve disputes themselves through this working group we've also built a comprehensive access to justice database that profiles all of the access to justice projects and initiatives that exist within this province this online searchable database will hopefully be linked to Nova Scotia 211 which is set to launch in the fall Nova Scotia 211 for those of you who aren't aware is a telephone triage service designed to quickly link Nova Scotians to information and service they need in a number of sectors so it includes that includes health and social services but it also includes the justice sector we've also supported the legal information society with its pro bono initiative which will provide a series of summary advice clinics situated around the province and finally as I indicated earlier we've embarked on a number of initiatives designed to meet the needs of historically disadvantaged communities through the use of volunteer lawyers we provide legal information sessions to new Canadians Mi'kma'a and African Nova Scotian communities and we're planning a symposium in June to begin to address the challenges faced by rural women when trying to access legal services and our rural practices working group is dedicated to addressing the particular access challenges facing rural communities so despite these significant efforts and the important work of a number of other organizations in the province the reality remains that large sectors of our population are unable to afford and or access a lawyer or any other service to help them solve their legal disputes so in reality I think we actually still do have a very long way to go and I believe that access to justice will remain a growing problem and the less we're willing to start thinking outside the narrow box that currently seems to include only lawyers and courts and start to envision an entirely different way of doing things in the future so in relation to legal services this will require a willingness to consider a range of possibilities that will increase the public's knowledge and confidence and their abilities to work through legal issues themselves these may include comprehensive legal websites or other technologies access to legal information in schools and community centers or empowering frontline workers and service providers to provide much needed navigation through legal services we will also require it will also require that we improve access to lawyers by considering a range of strategies such as unbundling legal services or limited scope retainers which is the concept that we would permit lawyers to provide limited representation to a client by taking only a part of a client's legal matter increasing access to legal aid services cultural competence education developing technologies that help lawyers in urban centers to provide advice to remote rural communities that may not have access to lawyers and being open to the possibility of other professional such as paralegals possibly social workers counselors or others playing some role in the provision of these services specifically social workers and counselors could play a role in family law processes where we are already moving away from a purely adversarial model and have begun to see much more use of collaborative family law family group conferencing case conferencing conciliation mediation and other dispute resolution processes many family lawyers have indicated that dispute resolution processes have proven to be very successful they are quicker often and more efficient and have the added benefit of freeing up court time for other matters and increasing access for clients to other types of services so generally speaking I think we need to start shifting away from our reliance on the traditional ways of practicing law and just opening ourselves up to start to consider some of the other options that are out there in Nova Scotia for example we're seeing considerable success with a restorative approach to addressing conflict and harm restorative justice has been successfully implemented throughout the province to address youth and even in some regions adult criminal matters and this has proven to reduce recidivism and successfully decrease the number of young people being processed through the court system the human rights commission has recently adopted a restorative approach to repair relationships and offer faster solutions to complaints the possibilities in this area are significant and remain to be developed so although I think I've named a number of examples I really only just scratched the surface there are many options and possible directions that we could take and of course I'm not suggesting that we can or will take on all of these activities in Nova Scotia but we do not need to start thinking about the possibilities because I believe that with open minds consultation with the communities in this province and a little creativity it is possible to dramatically change the way Nova Scotians understand access and interact with legal services of course we do need to be sure these services will be delivered in a competent and ethical manner but I believe that this can be done and should not limit our thinking at this stage change is necessary because the demand for legal services is increasing and we know that at the society that the numbers of lawyers in this province is remaining static and has for many years and we are concerned that it could decline we can't expect the legal profession as it currently exists to be able to fill this gap on its own and so we need to start thinking of these other options possibilities and opportunities in this area to close I just want to tell you a brief story a few weeks ago my son fell at daycare later that night he complained of pains in his chest and it was about 7 p.m. on a Thursday night and there was no way to reach our family doctor so I went online and the first thing I came up with was an excellent website on Nova Scotia 811 I then used their telephone helpline and within 15 minutes I was speaking to a nurse who asked me a number of questions about his pain and his breathing and on this base is recommended we see a doctor as soon as possible 40 minutes later we were in a doctor's office at a walk-in clinic not far from my home this doctor gave us some recommendations to address the issue and told us if the symptoms didn't clear up to see our family doctor early the next week the symptoms did in fact clear up and we did not have to visit our doctor but the point I want to make in bringing forward the story is that we did receive straightforward excellent advice quickly and efficiently and we didn't bog down the hospital system or cram into our doctor's waiting room for hours in my experience this was the medical system at its best and this success was accomplished because the players within the system including the doctors and nurses were willing to start to extend the scope of their services and offer these services in a variety of different formats so now imagine if these options were available for legal services first a reliable comprehensive website that would allow you to gain the information you need to better understand your legal issue and also to point you in the direction of the processes and services needed to begin finding solutions this website could be connected to a phone line which would be man by a legal professional who could help you understand the severity and urgency of your legal issue and provide you with options and possibly solutions and finally if need be you could go to a drop-in clinic where a lawyer could offer you 15 or 20 minute sessions to identify your problem provide you with possible things you could do to address this issue yourself or if necessary recommend you retain the lawyer these types of options and of course an endless array of other possibilities is where our future lies thank you Emma Professor Trevor Farrow teaches at Osgoode Hall Law School York University in several areas including professional ethics and responsibility he's the chair of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice one of the organizations which participates in the the action committee that Justice Carmel told us about he's a member of the action committee and also a member of the court process simplification working group which is one of the groups that will be reporting this spring Trevor will speak to us about the importance of the work we're discussing the importance of access to legal services an assessment of where we are and the costs if we fail to meet this challenge never fails whenever I need to an answer to a question ask Richard Devlin I've got to say it's a real honor to be part of this WICWIRE session with my co-panelists it's a real delight to be back here in Halifax and at Dalhousie I want to thank the Dean and Professor and Devlin and all the folks who have organized this this session I also want to say it's a real treat to be in the company of some of my former professors Professors Evans and Archibald great to be back here so the the title of the of our panel today is access to justice reality rhetoric or recommitment I still haven't figured out whether I'm reality rhetoric or recommitment I think it might be rhetoric that's left after the last two sessions it's a big topic and there's many ways to look at access to justice what I'm going to try and do in a relatively brief time is to look at four things I'm going to come back to the question that Justice Cromwell started with with this question is what is access to justice and then going to look at the question of how are we doing with access to justice the third thing I want to touch on is a particular issue that I think we can focus on part of the engagement of how to deal with this and then the fourth part of the of the session will be to take a look at what do we what does it cost not to do this or of not making justice accessible so to turn to the first issue what is access to justice and I think the first thing we need to do is to take up the invitation both from Justice Cromwell and Emma to think broadly and I want to spend a little bit of time thinking broadly for a minute and I think we need to first look at the question is what's the purpose of law which is a which is a conversation that we have in different ways certainly in this in this kind of environment and I think put simply the purpose of law is to assist with the creation or the attainment of a just and flourishing society okay and the idea of the good life which citizens our clients folks are pursuing is at the core of what I think of as of the public interest okay and so the notion of justice or the idea of justice really I think is the attainment of that just and flourishing society so therefore the purpose of law if we look at that is to help achieve that notion of justice in the form of the good life and I think there's an individual and I think there's a collective aspect to this conversation there's an individual aspect to it in a rights-based freedom seeking society but I also think there's a very important collective aspect to this idea of the good life or the public interest particularly in highly interdependent globalized communities that we live in so if we think that that's what the purpose of law is and what is what about access to justice and so that I think access to justice has to be bound up in this idea of access to the good life and I think it's very much a conversation that resonates with what a lot of ethicists have been looking pre and post the enlightenment for generations and it's an aspirational idea about what members of the public are looking for they're the badges of citizenship they're housing they're food they're bus passes they're nannies they're fair working conditions they're a quality in the workplace and in the hallways of where we work and live and operate I think that's the kind of justice that our clients and the public actually really care about when we're thinking about this topic of access to justice so if we if we think if we come back to the topic of today access to justice I think it includes the subset the very important subset of access to legal services courts judges etc a number of things that we're going to be talking about all of these things are important they're all good things but they're not ends in themselves they're steps along the process I think to the broader more aspirational notion of what we're looking for as citizens in the community and I think if we look at our own role we are steps along that process to the attainment of that just good life so I want to take seriously that invitation that Justice Cromwell started us off with on thinking broadly second question how are we doing and I think there's you know there's no secret there's that there's a growing disconnect discontent generally in society in terms of where things at and maybe I'll start first with a statement from the occupy movement there has been a theft by the 1% of our democrat democratic ability to shape and form the society in which we live and our society is steered toward the destructive purpose pursuit of consumption profit and greed at the expense of all else what else are people saying if we look at Richard Branson's new book the short-term focus on profit has driven most businesses to forget about the long-term role in taking care of people now of course this quick look at the broad sort of societal level of how we how we're doing it's a tough hill to climb we can't as lawyers fix everything but I think we need not to lose sight of the fact that there is a connection between the disconnect sorry discontent in society generally and I think the growing discontent that people are feeling with an increasingly inaccessible justice system okay so what about that legal system and let's take a look at that and I think there's no there's certainly no lack of statements on how we're doing there and I'm sorry to say that this is not the feel good moment of the session we're not doing that well so where are we going to start and I think we can look at we can start with the world justice project the 2011 rule of law index which ranked a 16 out of 23 of the high-income countries indexed this year in terms of access to justice okay which was seen around the community as quite frankly not that good so now the test for the moment for those of you that thought you were going to come and sit and listen the next three slides you need to engage with so I want to ask you this question on a critique of our current state of access to justice who said this horror stories abound about the many Canadians who do not have access to the legal profession and therefore cannot protect their rights not only in the criminal sphere but also in the civil sphere although the Canadian legal profession has expressed significant concern in general its response has been inadequate anyone know Chief Justice McLaughlin it's a terrific guess and I did have a slide from her but I chose to replace it with so let's try another person if we don't like that authority who said this does the legal profession recognize just how large a problem there is with access to justice I have serious concerns that we have hit the iceberg but are being too slow to recognize the seriousness of the damage or the threat to the integrity of the structure that the collision has caused the problem is real and growing anyone know who said that Justice Cromwell all right third just for fun this one might be a little easier but for a warm afternoon let me just go back to the November cold November foggy days of yonder year a high court of chancery where members of the bar are engaged in one of the of 10,000 stages of an endless cause tripping one another up on slippery precedents groping knee deep in technicalities making a pretense of equity with bills cross bills answers rejoiners injunctions affidavit issues and mountains of costly nonsense as I drop my water this is the court of chancery which gives to the moneyed might the means abundantly of wearing out the right which so exhausts finances patience courage hope so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart that there is not an honorable man among its practitioners who would not give the warning suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here on the 200th anniversary it seemed appropriate so that's a bit of a tour through how are we doing right now and I don't think it's an unfair tour not withstanding some good efforts that we're that we're we're getting into and I think aggravating this problem is that not all inaccessibility is created equal unfortunately the inaccessibility visits itself more on a number of groups one recent study talked about at least 70 to 90% of legal problems never even make it to to to legal help and of the folks that have those problems most of them more than 50% are self-represented litigants or dealing with these problems themselves Emma talked about some of this it's typically the marginalized groups and the folks who have the least resources who are dealing with these challenging issues and there are particular areas of concern family law that we've heard of a number of times and other areas that often also visit themselves more heavily on low and increasingly marginalized groups the result is that law is becoming increasingly inaccessible and to an alienating of those for whom it was meant to serve it's quite frankly an unsustainable situation people don't understand law they don't want it they can't afford it and they're starting to look for answers elsewhere so what do we do about that and when we were preparing for this panel Justice Cromwell sort of laid down the gauntlet I don't know if you remember this but basically said not so much talk let's get action and if you had one thing you wanted to focus on what would be that problem and what might be the solution well I took his invitation seriously partly because it's hard to turn down a question from a supreme court judge but there are many there are many issues but the one challenge I want to take up is that I think there is a culture and this is a bit of a challenge it's a bit of a confrontational statement but I think there is a culture of non-accountability within the profession there's a culture of moral and social disconnect and non-accountability now of course most lawyers I think work hard they're good people they want to do good things but at the end of the day lawyers are of the view ultimately that ours is not the bidding of society but it's the bidding of our clients of our fee paying clients so where do I go for authority for this and we could go all over the place but if we go back to the recently amended code here in this province which is similar to the codes across the country we see a familiar statement the lawyer has a duty to the client to raise fearlessly every issue advance every argument and ask every question however distasteful that the lawyer thinks will help the client's case and to endeavor to obtain for the client the benefit of every remedy and defense authorized by law however distasteful actually my favorite was the similar provision in Alberta that came off the books recently with the new federations code that said what the lawyer thinks about her client's case is essentially irrelevant it's a culture that is it's convenient it's familiar and unfortunately it's hidden behind some very important some good meaning but some problematic themes such as clients rights freedom zealous advocacy etc and we find ourselves as lawyers using this now of course clients are entitled to their legal services I'm not saying anything about that but the result is that lawyers are starting to avoid the messy results and implications of their work and the moral implications and the ethical implications under the guise of saying I'm simply the lawyer it's my client's retainer however distasteful the result of that though individually is that clients with money and power are driving the public agenda and collectively the system is becoming increasingly inaccessible unfair and it's imploding so the nice tight theory that we're operating under operating under is I think not just the solution but it's starting to become the cause of the problem so I'm conscious of the time and I think what I want to do is stop on that moment and just say I think as lawyers we want to ask ourselves are we part of the problem or are we going to become part of the solution and I think it's time to stop saying we don't have the power of the room in the room because increasingly the folks who are wielding the power in the room I think are not so much the clients but the people who they're retaining and I look to Roberto Unger for support for this when I say that in the relatively de-energized democracies of today much of the controversy over the basic structure of social life which is driven out from the arena of government politics passes into the hands of the professions that's us the power of the of what happens in society is passing into our hands under the guise of technical expertise it matters how we relate to the citizenry and how the discourse and practice of each profession suppresses or exhibits transformative opportunity in social life put simply we have the power in the room really to make a difference and I think we need to start realizing that we've made a number of promises to do so and they're familiar to the room so I can be very quick going back to our codes of conduct that we promise to operate in the public interest I look to the the constating document in my province which is not typically the beacon of progressivism particularly these days but when I look at our law society act we as a group of lawyers in Ontario promise to advance the cause of justice and the rule of law to facilitate access to justice and to protect the public interest that's the deal we've made and it's nice that we've got this rhetoric I think what's the problem is we're not making good on our promise and so the culture shift that I'm asking for is the problem is the disengagement and so the solution to take up justice Cromwell is a culture shift and it's a serious culture shift because I think we can tweak with rules we can look at systems and we can look at institutional change but if we're not behind it ourselves we're not going to get very far and I think many of you in the room are probably familiar with this statement particularly from students we'd love to make a difference that's why we came to law school but what's it like in the real world because what I hear is I have to follow the senior partner I've got to do what my client says and what I think about this case doesn't matter and I think that's where I have my one wish list for the day I think we could really focus our energies and we do have the power to engage with that issue in this room so my final point what's the cost of not doing this and I think the cost is high legal problems cluster particularly at the low and middle income spectrum of society related social problems come up so what do I mean by that and let's take a quick example dad loses his job it becomes a social assistance issue there's pressure at home domestic violence ensues there's abuse there's family breakdown problems for kids at school substance abuse further substance abuse and the cycle continues and so the idea is that legal problems at the front end if they're solved early can do a significant make a significant difference at that back end of clustering legal problems that do come up if we don't get at the issues early on and I think we need to see that as the ultimate spectrum of access to justice issues it's not just the one off issues at the front end it's the clustering of these problems that then create further problems in that notion of the good life which put on its head becomes very much the notion of the bad life if you want to look at it in economic terms it makes huge sense there's a social welfare benefit of doing this there's an economic benefit to governments and to society about spending a dollar early in order to save 10 later and it makes good practical sense for lawyers because if we don't do something about it at some point someone's going to say stop the hemorrhaging we've got to look for a different model and that justice Cromwell raised this cost of justice project and I won't spend much time on it I'm happy to take questions later but the idea of this cost of justice project that we've got it's a five-year project really to look at two questions what does it cost to deliver good accessible justice and on the flip side what does it cost if we don't deliver good and accessible justice and really pushing more to a medical model of the cost benefit analysis of early intervention to use Richard Susskin we'd much rather have a fence at the top of the hill than an ambulance at the bottom and I think we need to start thinking seriously and smartly about how we spend our dollars because that's really what we're talking about my time's up so on on in my conclusion of this paper I've raised a number of issues but really the point I want to leave you with is this it's an aspirational notion of justice it's an aspirational notion of access and then it's a look in the mirror notion of how do we engage and take up this issue of what we can do and I think it's not just rhetoric to recommit to this I think we actually have to say to ourselves are we in this for the long haul or not and if so it's time to really put our money in our actions where our mouths are thank you I thank our panelists for three excellent and interesting presentations let's let me start by asking if any of them has any comments I'd like to add now perhaps in response to something that one of the other panelists has said Prasad Justice Krambo curiously making notes as the other speakers just like to say to Emma she was right about the brilliance and funny in the order never let me back down never two thoughts one rising out of Trevor's talk and I Trevor I think I I get your point about the sort of mindless adversarialism but on the other hand I think we don't want to lose our commitment to fearless courageous advocacy because I think it's needed it may not be needed in some of the places where you were referring to it but I would hate the bar to lose that independence and courage that can be a voice for people who otherwise wouldn't have a a voice and in response really a rising out of Emma's talk I just think that the importance of technology in in access to justice can't be underestimated I know when I was on the court of appeal here we had about a fifth of our files had at least one self-represented person and I see Chief Justice McDonald nodding and you know the people who would come to court didn't fit the sort of stereotype you might have of self-represented litigants if you didn't have a lot of first-hand experience and the vast majority of those people had access to the internet and most of them used it and would say boy did we ever find that a web resource that you've mounted on how to prosecute an appeal or you know and that Boucher when she was registered of the court did a presentation for paralegals legal assistance on how to put an appeal book together which was then videotaped and mounted on the web accessible on the website and the number of self-reps that would say we watched Ms. Boucher's presentation we think we've got this figured out so I really think that the whole technology piece of this can be huge and it can be pretty low-cost once you do the up-front work so just two reflections on a rising out of your talks which I thought were terrific I think the one thing I just wanted to comment actually I'm really interested to hear the floor questions from the floor so I'll be very brief but I do think that picking up on Emma's sort of menu of options that they're looking at and Justice Carmel and I were talking with Emma ahead of time I do think that looking at the solutions to access to justice as a menu of options and then taking up your point Justice Carmel about where can I engage or where can we engage on those moments I think it's really the only way we can think about this as opposed to some kind of universal solution to this so I thought that was very helpful The panel is open for questions from the floor Have we any questions? Yes, up back Where the cell has really kept pace with the growth of the Canadian population and this might be the nature of my blah blah probably by the lawyers Are you sure that you have lawyers? I'll be quick and Dean probably has probably has the best answer on this but I think it's a it's a it's a really good question and I think there's actually more lawyers coming in than we may think although I don't have the numbers in my fingertips but there's a huge number of lawyers coming in from overseas Canadians going elsewhere others coming here through the national committees on accreditation and the process of sort of licensing lawyers so we've got a set of seats in Canada and we've got an increasing number of seats elsewhere one of the interesting conversations that are happening right now particularly in Ontario is there's a there's a a gate to go through which is artically different jurisdictions do that differently but one of the bottlenecks for increasing the number of lawyers certainly in Ontario and I think starting elsewhere is the artically process and so we're really struggling with how to increase the numbers from a regulatory perspective in order to address access while at the same time you know keeping a level of quality and what have you but I don't have any solutions to your to the impact of your question but I know that it's one that the different bar societies are looking at seriously right now and artically seems to be the big bottleneck yeah I would agree with that comment I think I don't think there's a shortage of lawyers coming into law school or students who made the law school but we are seeing less fewer numbers you know getting artically positions and then we're also seeing fewer numbers at higher back and I mean over the last few years since about 2008 that's really been consistent at least perhaps before that so and often that cited as economic conditions and so on it's challenging but that's the reality we're seeing and as I said previously we are not seeing a growth in the lawyers in the who are members of the bar in Nova Scotia right now so that does play a role definitely definitely and we are some of the things I've spoke up I think and sort of thinking differently maybe even about how we look at articles thinking about we have a rural practices group so we are seeing a significant shortage of lawyers in rural Nova Scotia for example that's come up on a number of occasions lots of discussion around that so how we sort of feed the students coming out of school into rural communities and create those relationships has been certainly a priority for us so this past year there was a conference that dealt with that issue and sort of trying to look at at really identifying where are the most significant gaps in lawyers and how do we ensure that the students actually get there because that's what we're seeing is an issue just add a quick word the in terms of the absolute numbers I don't know what the answer is to that question how many lawyers optimally there ought to be but I think there are distribution issues as Emma mentioned and so for example in Manitoba the Law Society as I understand it is helping students from rural communities where there's a shortage of access to legal services the Law Society is actually assisting them with the cost of their legal education in exchange for an undertaking to go back to their hometowns and practice law something similarly that we were doing with doctors in Nova Scotia 30 years ago so that's one piece of the puzzle I think another piece may be modes of practice that I think there's probably a lot of work to be done on helping people access a mode of practice that's satisfying for them but also fills a gap in the access to legal services I was chatting at lunch about one example in in Alberta where a couple have opened a block fee family law only practice and they will do each aspect of a family law file on a block fee basis that's all they do they've taken full advantage of technology to make the practice very efficient and a lot of people who previously were not seeking professional legal help are going to them they are by all reports making a good living and filling a need in the community so that in addition to the problem of what's the ratio of lawyers to the population which I really don't have a handle on I think there are issues of distribution and also issues of how the services are made available up here I'm curious for your thoughts on mandatory pro bono and having system which lawyers can choose to either apply any kind legal services or paying for a fine and delay precedent chance so I we've done a lot of work and I think we need to continue to do work to figure out models of pro bono and to increase pro bono what we do know is that there is currently quite a bit of pro bono happening but there isn't any kind of process by which you can engage in pro bono through any kind of formalized program here in Nova Scotia that does exist in other provinces whether I personally think it should be mandatory I'm actually not sure right now what I feel on that I haven't really looked at that issue enough or whether in an ideal world that wouldn't be required in fact that if we could create a formalized system and we could sort of seek the type of engagement that I think we've talked about today that in fact we would see a number of lawyers and really jumping at the opportunity to take on pro bono and about in 2009 I participated I worked with a number of other a couple of other colleagues on a study into pro bono services provision in the province and what we found from that study is that there were was a real interest in pro bono particularly from newer lawyers and law students indicated that that was something that they would want they wanted to prioritize but what we were seeing is that actually finding ways to carry out their whatever type of pro bono that they wanted to carry out or the types of cases they want to take on pro bono there was no access for them to actually find those clients and so on and there wasn't necessarily any overall support whether that was from firms or from the bar or it wasn't there wasn't support but there was no acknowledged support at that time and that was a real barrier so I you know before I would go down the road of mandatory I think I would want us to explore those options of what kinds of programs could we put in place that would really make it appealing how could we make it seem it an asset for law firms to to really have a formalized pro bono program how would we look at that and I think that's a direction we need to be going in this province I did mention that the legal information society has the project underway they've just started it this year they've received funding for the next few years to implement a formalized pro bono project starting with summary advice legal clinics and so that's sort of the first step I would say in taking that on and I hope from there we see real growth in the area of pro bono two very quick points one is if you're interested Professor Devlin wrote a terrific article on this a number of years ago you may have seen it but the second point I think one of the arguments against mandatory pro bono this is not fair on the lawyers and I do know that there are lawyers who it's harder on than others small firms small sole practitioners rural lawyers and what have you but I think we also need to remember that we've got a what I would view anyway as a perfect monopoly to practice law and we we've promised to society that in return for being the only game in town there's some conditions and one of them is providing access to justice and I think it's one of many menu items so I don't think pro bono is at all the solution but I think it's certainly one of the menu items and I would not be sad at all to see a mandatory pro bono requirement across the board but I know it's not un-controversial just two quick thoughts one is I think my law partners would be the first to tell you that I did a lot of pro bono before it was invented we called it receivables I think I even paid tax on some of them but but I think there is a sort of a structural issue to think about with a sort of mandatory pro bono I mean you have to think about the solicitor and client relationship and while they're of course they're the ethical obligations of course but in a solicitor and client traditional solicitor and client relationship there is an element of accountability because you're going to be looking to the person to whom you're providing the services to pay your bill when you're finished or along the way if you have a somebody who didn't want to be doing the work in the first place without the accountability of the financial relationship I guess I just worry about the nature of that solicitor and client relationship if you if you had sort of a volunteer army that didn't want to be in the battle in the first place I'd be a little worried about how hard they might be fighting for the for the client through the question thank you thank you do I have to throw back the question follow up the question in terms of the the structural problems and I was saying that you could need about in-prime services but for many people who are not realistic to donate those services or don't want to make that choice you can simply pay to the client which would expand the way and you wouldn't have the issue of conflicts or or rather to the the time at small terms and that sort of do all through the balance of the structural problems yeah I think that's certainly a good option if that's the the that were to go I mean I think there's a lot of lawyers doing lots of pro bono work and there's lots of people that want to do it so but that's certainly one option I think if mandatory we're put in place that's true I just want to put in a plug for the no social law reform commission but also to think up on a point that's from from well made but the whole business so excess justice being a real sinkhole we're doing a study on the enforcement of civil judgments now we talked about people trying to get into the car about but once you get to judgment people don't feel they get much justice if they can't enforce it and the problem we're running into of course is that the sheriff's department is not funded properly enough so it's going to cost more money for additional personnel then you get into the I guess it's a political question of whether you outsource some of the functions of the sheriff's office all I'm saying is that these problems we're dealing with are not small ones and they occurred both at the front end of the system end up the back end too my second comment and made it to question I was on one of these civil justice studies in all this grocery one of the big problems that we ran into was lawyers taking advantage of the discovery rules to ask all kinds of what might be considered irrelevant questions in order to run up the hours now I have no problem with lawyers taking up unpopular causes I'm just wondering if there's an ethical question here for the bar about lawyers who can't resist the temptation to make a little of extra money by doing more than they really need to do I just wonder if the panel would like to comment on that I think there's a I'll focus on this the second point I very much think that the connection between rules of civil procedure and rules of professional conduct is coming closer and closer if there were if there was ever a difference I think the difference has to be eliminated because how you practice law I think is all about what you're practicing of course the rules committees in various provinces have been looking at this issue rules of proportionality rules of efficiency redoing discovery rules and what have you so there's some effort been done significant effort to address some of that abuse and some efforts on case management and what have you but I also think quite frankly that it's part of this commitment to a new professionalism that particularly if you have a client that wants to beat up on the other side I think that's where the role of the council comes in and says and there are good council who already do this but instilling that right from the start in the idea of lawyers are not simply a mouthpiece and we say that but it's amazing how we don't the resonance of that statement doesn't really follow through particularly at the early stage of the bar I think lots of young lawyers don't have the courage to stand up to their clients and serve it to their senior partners and so these are the moments on the day-to-day practice where I think all lawyers have to stand up and say this is part of the bigger good of the justice system just a couple of thoughts Bill one is that while I I think you've obviously raised an important and valid point I think we also have to bring it up I beg your pardon was it really? it wasn't really important it wasn't funny but the I think we we can't ever forget the other side of that is that you know clients are consumers and if things turn out badly as they generally do for at least one side a lot of questions get asked but well why didn't you do this or why didn't you do that? I know Dan has lots of experience in the representing lawyers who have run afoul of various things or allegedly run afoul of various things and so we can't forget about the pressure on the lawyer to on the one hand exercise good professional judgment and practice it in an ethical way but also has to we have to at least recognize the pressures that there may be there from potential professional liability the second thing is that over the last 30 years we've moved to really creating a lot of judicial intervention in the solicitor and client relationship I mean the whole move towards case management in the courts throughout North America certainly in part is driven by the concern that lawyers without some direction or some limit setting run amuck in various ways some of which you've described but that also gives rise to its own set of issues about you know is the is the heavy is the judicial management hand too heavy is a judge well equipped for that management role so I come back to an important component of legal practices the exercise of good judgment and that is essential in a very ethical context and I think that if you have that strong base many of the concerns that you've raised wouldn't be present but they're certainly real and I don't see a quick or easy fix for them but I'd really be interested in dance dance view I thought Justice Cromo was referring to my experience in client second guessing me after we lost I can tell him about that No, you're quite correct but to differentiate between the lawyer who is running up the hours for his own reasons and the lawyer who is being exceptionally diligent to avoid being second guessed it would be pretty difficult to show but it could be a real problem and I think what's happened is that we've gone to a kind of a rationing you know we've designed rationing a procedure we've gone increasingly to simplified procedures for cases under a certain monetary limit we've imposed limits on oral discovery that didn't exist previously and of course this is all kind of ironic because when I started in this business in the 70s you know the more discovery we had the better it would all be all the cases would settle the trials would be more focused et cetera fast forward 30 years what's the big problem in civil litigation discovery run amuck so you know we're it shows the kind of the cyclical nature of the of the problem and there are a few in the society where everybody wants perfection and there are a few of us in this room we're old enough to remember what a four day trial was a long trial well I can tell you I did two criminal jury trials in three days when I was called to the bar in 1979 no I had a very guilty guy further questions that we are runner I'm wondering if anyone has analyzed a lot about the nature of regulation of lawyers and whether it has any bearing on access to justice so is there any evidence from other jurisdictions the lawyers are not self-regulated that would say that access to justice issues are lessened or increased is there any relationship there I can't answer the question directly but I can go back to the world justice index that that Trevor referred to in his remarks and if I remember well and Trevor you'd probably be able to correct me on this but if I remember well the top countries in access to civil justice were all European countries where the structure is legal profession and indeed the structure of the court system is very different than what we have and perhaps Trevor you could could fill in some of the details on that well you're exactly right I can tell you that just out of interest Australia Austria Belgium Estonia Germany then some of the Asian countries Hong Kong Japan and then back to Europe so it was very much your largely European focus ahead which I attribute a leak there's a number of things I think that I attribute that to different traditions and what have you I do think though that we're going to see and I don't have an answer to the question is first thing and maybe Richard who's done some work in the sort of deregulation does but I do think that we're going to see market forces coming to play in a different way than we might see them here where we and I'm not suggesting that we need to to get rid of self-regulation but it will be interesting to watch those market forces at play when we see a different regulator and some of the services opened up we're already seeing some of the services opened up in different parts of the country in terms of paralegals and what have you and that's having an impact and my intuition is that that there will be a different level of access and more providers and more access points but I think that's a couple of years down the road okay I was just wondering what the issue of market and the kind of legal insurance does that provide a future solution to broaden space by the middle class with access to justice or put it in the comment of both possible limitations of that and like that more benefit I can tell you that our access to the legal services working group is actively looking at legal services insurance both in its sort of traditional form and also in the insurance model of trying to increase access to legal aid through an more of an insurance based model I don't know a lot about it but I can tell you this much that my understanding is that in the UK about 50% of the people have legal services insurance whereas in Canada across Canada it's about two or three percent in Quebec it's about seven percent I think so that even within our country there's quite a swing and I think it's got to be a piece of the puzzle for sure because we're not going to get the whole new infusion resources into the civil justice system in this country as far as I can tell so we're going to have to find ways of getting funds for people to have access Karen, I wasn't very accurate my way before go ahead Thank you I have a a pop quiz question for the panel but before I get to that I guess one of the folks that I I always you know perhaps in my old age I read a tattooed across my bicep like Angeline and Jolie and that is from the our versus Crossford case in terms of the poor are not constitutional castaways and the other one that I quote from I think it was Judge Sturgis Justice is open to the public in the same way as the Ritz Hotel so I always thought that kind of resonated but this is my pop quiz and if you know it don't answer just say I know and I don't open at all that will come after I think there are so many people here I also throw it out to everybody here and just as a a little bit of a hint I am the I work with Nova Scotia Legal Aid I'm the executive director of Nova Scotia Legal Aid commission so the question for everybody just put up the hand if you know is what does ALAPC stand for that's what I thought it stands for the association of legal aid plans of Canada and so my question then to the panel perhaps of course some discussion is do you think that Legal Aid has fallen off the radar in terms of this discussion I've often said that Legal Aid is access to justice in motion and yet you see in terms of federal government commitment to Legal Aid plans nationally decline in that commitment in terms of resourcing and yet you see very interesting studies that are coming from Australia and even from Texas that notes the the next economic benefits of investing in Legal Aid showing that you put a dollar into Legal Aid and it will generate that economic benefits of between $1.60 and $2.25 that's the Australian study and the Texas study looks at it and gives you an economic benefit of $1.00 gives you almost $8.00 in return so my question to you do you think that we're missing an opportunity to refocus on Legal Aid have we taken Legal Aid for granted are we overlooking its potential and you know the answer I want yes I'm conscious of the time to all be brief but I really do think that we're missing the vote there's a big issue there though right because there's not an appetite of public dollars going into the system at the moment I disagree with that premise so we could get into that conversation because I do think it's a political question and there is not the political will to really fund the system but like the question before with insurance really essentially a public insurance scheme is what we're talking about universal legal care if you will I mean take it to its its logical conclusion I think there's all sorts of economic arguments that would support doing that or at least making it more robust but I don't want to stand here and say I think that's going to happen tomorrow I think that's a tough political argument at the moment but one I would support going ahead I can just say Karen that in terms of our work Legal Aid is certainly not being overlooked the chair of our legal services working group is Mark Benton who you would know I did actually know the answer to your question and Melina Buckley who is the author of the report for the CBA which has worked tirelessly I think Rowley's here Rowley's written reports on this for the CBA over the years and an emphasis on legal aid and Melina's a member of that working group and chair of the CBA's Access to Justice Committee so there's no way that legal aid is being overlooked in fact Dave Crossen who's a highly regarded civil litigator criminal lawyer in Vancouver is chair of the BC Legal Services Society he's actually requested to be part of our working group so legal aid is front and center but I think the other piece of that is that if we think the strategy is to just sort of stamp our feet and ask for more dough we've been doing that for 30 years and it's worse now than when we started so we have to get some other strategies but there have to be strategies that are based on a legal aid system that functions for sure and based on an economic construct you is not only the right thing to do but it's the efficient thing to do and that I think perhaps resonates with others we hope so sometimes the only thing I would add I mean the two of my two panelists certainly said it very well but is just that in the Nova Scotia context to and absolutely without question both you know the work of Dalhousie legal aid service and Nova Scotia legal aid is you know the thing moving us forward in the area of improving our access to justice and it's not just the work I would say providing services legal lawyers for clients but also innovation and thinking through you know other types of provision of legal information sessions and you know certainly poverty law expansion in the area of poverty law and absolutely should not be and will I hope will not be forgotten or not thought of it's crucial to what where we are here today you know so chef ladies and gentlemen we're a few minutes past our advertised stop time so I think I'm going to close the questions and on your behalf thank our three excellent panelists and invite professor Devlin to bring our proceedings to a conclusion thank you Dan and just very briefly I want to sort of drop things up I want to thank our three panelists we've identified the the challenges of the reality the grim reality of access to justice we've identified that we need to move beyond the rhetoric and we've had three panelists justice Cromwell professor Farrell and miss Halpern who have actually shown a real commitment to working with access to justice so on behalf of this just goes off I want to thank them for spending time with us