MIDDLE AGE
Lawyer starts career after
divorce at age 46
PAGE 4
CHARITABLE GIFTS
TICK TOCK
How to handle limitation
periods in bankruptcy
PAGE 14
TECHNOLOGY
JEREMY HAINSWORTH VANCOUVER B.C.’s legal aid system is fail- ing to meet the human, eco- nomic and social needs of British Columbians and should be an essential service like health care, says a new commission report into the system. “In a just society, it is a public service that is as essential as edu- cation, healthcare, and social assistance,” said veteran B.C. law- yer Len Doust who headed a pub- lic commission on legal aid launched in June 2010. “The significance of the legal
aid system is that it picks up
where our other social systems
fail and timely legal aid can often
significantly reduce the strain on
healthcare and social assistance,”
Doust said.
He said the social and eco-
nomic costs of an inadequate
legal aid system “are simply too
high to allow us to postpone fun-
damental change any longer.”
Further, he said, the inad-
equacies in the current system
leave the provincial and federal
governments at risk to legal
challenges that they are failing to
meet their statutory, common
law, constitutional and inter-
national obligations.
The Making the Case for Legal
Aid as an Essential Public Service
report was prepared by Doust for
Association and The Victoria
Bar Association.

With 40 years of legal work under his belt, Doust said the investigation resulting in the report has given him a “much deeper appreciation of the devastation wreaked by the absence of adequate legal assistance and representation.

“Over the past decade or so this has grown into a wide chasm resulting in human suffering and related social and economic costs borne by our community,” Doust wrote.

Doust made nine recommendations: that legal aid be recognized as an essential public service, that a new approach be developed to define core services and priorities; that financial eligibility be modernized and expanded; that regional legal aid centres and innovative service delivery be established; that public engagement and political dialogue be expanded; that long-term, stable funding be increased; that the system must be proactive, dynamic and strategic; that there must be greater collaboration between public and private legal aid service providers; and that legal aid providers be provided more support.

In arriving at those conclu-
sions, Doust said, he was struck
by the unanimity of voices.

“The traditional hostility of the legal profession to change and the tendency to protect its territory was noticeably absent,” he said. “The usually strident voices that blame lawyers for the system’s ills

BC commission cites
devastation wrought by
inadequate legal aid

See Doust Page 3
Len Doust headed the B.C. commission on legal aid that issued its report last week.

THE LAWYERS WEEKLY

Vol. 22, No. 27 NEWS FOR THE LEGAL PROFESSION December 6, 2002

THE LAWYERS WEEKLY

VOL. 22, NO. 27 NEWS FOR THE LEGAL PROFESSION DECEMBER 6, 2002

Tax court delivers smackdown to donor

PAGE 9

a commission on legal aid after a series of consultations throughout the province and released March 8.

The commission was funded
by The Canadian Bar Associa-
tion B.C. Branch, The Law Soci-
ety of B.C., The Law Foundation
of B.C., The B.C. Crown Counsel
Association, The Vancouver Bar

The automated law office
PAGE 21
CRISTIN SCHMITZ OTTAWA
Lawyers who aspire to the federal
Bench take note—experience as a
Crown is a big plus.
A new Lawyers Weekly analysis dis-
closes that the Harper government has
ramped up its practice of appointing
Crowns and government lawyers to the
federal judiciary.
In 2010, 37 per cent of the lawyers
appointed by Justice Minister Rob
Nicholson to the provincial superior
courts (or Federal and Tax Courts) had
worked at one time as prosecutors—i.e.
either as federal or provincial Crowns, or
as federal Crown agents—or they had
worked as government lawyers.
In other words 15 of 41 lawyers
appointed in 2010 had done such work,
including 10 who were still in govern-
mental posts at the time they were
appointed.
By comparison in 2005, during the
Liberals’ last year in government, about
Harper appoints large number of Crowns to Bench

See Crown Page 25

Nicholson

THE LAWYERS WEEKLY

VOL. 22, NO. 27 NEWS FOR THE LEGAL PROFESSION DECEMBER 6, 2002

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