5,310
edits
Changes
→An impressive pile of reports
==An impressive pile of reports==
Beginning in the 1960s and early 70s, lawyers and judges began to be concerned about the justice system, partly because litigation associated with the civil rights struggle revealed gross inequalities in people's ability to access justice because as a result of their income, their sexual orientation, their gender, their religious inclinations, their ethnicity and the colour of their skin. People protested, wrote lots of important papers about access to justice, and lobbied government for change. As impotent as protests and lobbying can seem today, things did in fact change.
First, we saw the creation of provincial courts throughout the west. (The Provincial Court of British Columbia was founded in 1969.) Second, law schools across Canada began to develop student legal advice programs, through which law students provide provided legal services for free while learning more about the law and their future careers, including the [https://www.lslap.bc.ca Law Students' Legal Advice Program] at the University of British Columbia. We also saw human and civil rights legislation being introduced across Canada, including the [https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-12.3/FullText.html Canadian Bill of Rights] in 1960, the British Columbia ''Human Rights Code'' in 1973, and the ''Canadian Human Rights Act'' in 1977.
These were all important steps, but none of them was the silver bullet that solved the access to justice problem, and the problem continued. And got worse. In hindsight, it seems as if every 15 to 20 years after that point, concern about access to justice would build and build and then crest with a flurry of academic reports, government commissions and law society task forces. A few initiatives would be launched, some with lasting effect, like Canada's pro bono legal advice programs, and concern concerns about access to justice would again subside.
The most recent flurry happened in 2013. In that year, we had four very important national reports on the problems affecting Canadians' ability to access justice, and it seemed as though a moment of significant change was at hand. These papers are all very good and are all worth reading:
#Professor Julie Macfarlane's landmark study on the experiences of litigants without lawyers, "[https://perma.cc/PV9C-UE4X The National Self-Represented Litigants Project: Identifying and Meeting the Needs of Self-Represented Litigants],"#the report of the Canadian Bar Association's Access to Justice Committee, "[https://perma.cc/7Q94-VTML Equal Justice: Balancing the Scales],"
#the final report of the Family Justice Working Group of the Canada-wide Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters, "[https://perma.cc/4YKG-TQGF Meaningful Change for Family Justice: Beyond Wise Words]," which provided a particularly powerful call to action, and is really worthwhile reading, and
#the final summary report of the Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters, "[https://perma.cc/4574-YC3D Access to Civil and Family Justice: A Roadmap for Change]."
===Takeaways from these reports===
The report of the national committee's Family Justice Working Group was especially important. The authors observed that: