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 The Canadian Bar Association (CBA) launched a Legal Aid initiative to raise the awareness of government leaders and the public about the urgency of the legal aid issue. Simply put, the CBA believes that governments must ensure legal aid is available for low income Canadians to be able to exercise their most fundamental legal rights.
In February 2005, the CBA named a four-person legal team to launch a test case to challenge British Columbia’s legal aid plan. The goal was to establish a constitutional right to civil legal aid in Canada. The legal team was headed by CBA Past President JJ Camp, QC, of the Vancouver law firm of Camp Fiorante Matthews and included Sharon Matthews of the same firm, and Melina Buckley, PhD and Gwen Brodsky, PhD also of Vancouver.
The idea to litigate is one aspect of the CBA’s ongoing commitment to access to justice. Since the 1990s, the CBA has called for improvements to legal aid, specifically for a federal transfer earmarked for civil legal aid and linked to the amount actually spent by a province or territory. This would replace the current system, whereby the federal government makes a global transfer for several social services to the provinces and territories, which individually decide how much, if anything, is spent on civil legal aid.
Read the CBA's position on Legal Aid.
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[updated September 29, 2009]
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