By W Laurence Scott

Almost three years ago the B.C. Government announced that legal aid funding would be slashed by almost $35 million, from just over $88 million in 2001-2002 to just under $54 million in 2004-2005.

It was a decrease of approximately 40 per cent. Those spending cuts specifically targeted B.C.’s poorest people. So much of the progress our province had made in access to justice issues was turned back.

For some years now funding cuts to legal aid have meant that serious problems within the legal aid system have been avoided by administration wizardry, by the dedication and hard work of those working within the various legal aid offices and by the preparedness of our colleagues to accept work at unprofitably low legal aid rates and often for no pay at all.

Our law promises equal justice for everyone. This promise is not fulfilled when low-income individuals, especially women, have no meaningful access to the civil justice system. We embrace access and equality rhetorically without making serious attempts to give them practical content. “Equal justice under the law” does not approximate the way the system operates in practice. It is not what we wanted justice in our province to become.

A generation ago, one of history’s greatest civil rights leaders wrote a short, simple letter. At the time he was sitting in a small, dark jail cell in Alabama. Martin Luther King wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Here in B.C., this is the threat we face. Justice is threatened everywhere, because injustice will result if the government does not reverse its position on legal aid funding.

The growing number of unrepresented litigants is disturbing. More unrepresented litigants are appearing before the Court, putting new and added pressures on the Courts’ time and judges’ patience. The lack of legal representation not only puts the interest of the litigants at risk, it inevitably slows down court procedures and wastes public resources.

Legal aid is a valuable public benefit. Now that the provincial government has balanced the budget and enjoys a surplus, it is time to restore legal aid funding. A responsive and responsible justice system should not and cannot deprive people or even discourage poor people from seeking help for serious legal problems.

Each business and citizen who pays a lawyer to do work pays a social services tax, originally designated for legal aid. This tax collects about $100 million every year. The truth is that legal aid programs can more than pay for themselves as a result of the social services tax on legal accounts. So long as the social services tax is collected from our clients, it should go to legal aid.

We cannot absolve the Government of B.C. from its responsibility to provide adequate legal aid funding. We all recognize that a primary role for government is to protect those who cannot protect themselves. The cuts to legal aid programs seriously undermine this very legitimate role for government.

Now is not the time for lawyers to be silent. It is time for lawyers to speak out. It is time for lawyers to speak out loudly and with one strong voice.

Providing every citizen with equal treatment before the law is always difficult. But it remains one of the most cherished principles and objectives of free and democratic societies. Lawyers must defend it.

W. Laurence Scott is the Chair of the CBABC Legal Aid Committee.

This article was published in the February 2005 issue of BarTalk. © 2005 The Canadian Bar Association. All rights reserved.