Thank you, Madam Chair. In addition to the obvious review of the Legal Aid Act, which is going to hopefully give us some new direction on how to provide these types of services, the department did actually increase the legal aid division in both 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 to a total of three lawyers. It took a bit longer to fill those positions than anybody would have liked to have had. Really, those lawyers are really only getting up to speed now, compared to what existed before when much of the backlog had occurred.
We’re optimistic with these three new lawyers, plus the new one that will hopefully come in by way of supps, that we will start to see some of the improvement that you’re talking about. Because you’re absolutely right; there’s a backlog and it’s inappropriate and it’s unfortunate for our residents. So between the three and the one new one, the three are now up to speed and we’re starting to see some results.
I guess the question I have, as well is accessibility for these lawyers. Is it the fact that we as a government, are we paying adequately to attract lawyers to come here to work or are we at a disadvantage? Are other jurisdictions doing more to attract this professional person to come this far north?
We were able to fill our three positions and we’re optimistic that we’ll be able to fill our fourth one, should it be passed by way of supp. We have been able to fill our positions. One of our biggest challenges here in the Northwest Territories is a shortage of the local Bar. There’s not enough lawyers here that are private, independent lawyers. Not government lawyers. We’ve filled ours. There is definitely a shortage of local Bar.
I agree with the Minister. Talking to the number of lawyers that I have, we don’t have enough lawyers even to serve the needs of the residents who don’t use legal aid in the Northwest Territories. That could open up another set of questions as to do we need to rethink where you’re indicating that there’s going to be new update to the act. That’s just framework. We still need bodies. Are we going to have to look at opening up the doors to changing drastically enough so that we can actually have more government payrolled lawyers? I’ll start with that.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Ms. Schofield.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The government lawyers are all… Their positions and pay are evaluated the same as all other positions within the government. It’s difficult for legal aid or anybody hiring or trying to attract lawyers if we wanted to pay them more, because we are bound by the overall government’s position evaluation system. However, we have had, like the Minister had said, not any significant problems hiring staff lawyers, so that would assume that we have a competitive salary for our lawyers.
It does sound like there is potentially an impetus for us to look at wages for our… I know it’s about classifications and I don’t want to get into the legalese in terms of the criteria for pay. My question was purely are we in the ballpark to attract these people.
My next question will have to deal more with the aspect of poverty law and poverty law services. Poverty law services is helping the needs of the elderly to do wills and those types of things. Is that eating up a lot of our legal aid time? Should we be looking at a different vehicle to deal with poverty law?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Madam Chair. We have a full-time lawyer, a poverty lawyer, what is referred to as a poverty lawyer within our facility. This isn’t one of our legal aid lawyers. This was a different position. They are doing a significant amount of work and doing a lot of important work for residents all over the Northwest Territories. Some pretty basic things to some more complicated things. Every ounce of feedback that we get back from this position that this person is in, is that they are adding significant value to people who can’t afford these types of services.
Thanks to the Minister for the response. My last question really is about benchmarks and what does the Minister and the department have as a benchmark to really evaluate the efficiencies of legal aid accessibility. Are they using caseload backlog? Are they using time of waiting for cases? What is the criteria that the department is using to justify so that when we’re going to the next budget, we don’t need to bring that up again? We know what the criteria are from our side of the House.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. Ms. Watters.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The criteria we use are based primarily on national standards. We try to meet or beat national standards. They are based primarily on wait time because that seems to be a very critical factor. We also get informal feedback in terms of satisfaction. We have not done a formal satisfaction survey but we certainly get the feedback. The critical one is, as you suggested, the wait times.
Thank you, Ms. Watters. Next on my list is Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. My question is also on the Legal Services Act aspect here. Given the availability of lawyers relative to workload, the high degree of need for legal aid, and I include both court workers and lawyers here, and that legal aid is typically not based in small and remote communities, and obviously there’s the cost factor. What are we expecting and how would a new Legal Aid Act help out with those issues?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Ms. Watters.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The new act is not necessarily going to address all these issues. Most of these issues are more administrative rather than legislative and I think that is the way that we really need to look at resolving the issues. Certainly, having to resort to solving some of these issues by a legislation would be prohibitive and unfortunate, because they can be more easily dealt with through policy and practice guidelines.
I realize that it’s a tough question and we’ll have to wait and see to some degree. Primarily this is administrative stuff. The role of the court workers, obviously, is regarded by some to be quite important. Especially in our communities. Does the Minister see that as continuing to be an important part or will he play an enhanced role under new direction?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I think the court workers are an incredibly important role. I definitely want to see them continue. We will be looking for ways to utilize them more effectively and enhance their role.
There is a word to explore someday. Just with respect to my colleagues bringing up the issue of translation and whatnot, I know that in the past, court workers have played an important role there when they happen to have that talent. Is there an attempt to hire court workers that have more than one language to help deal with that issue, which I believe is a real one I’m sure the Minister would agree.
We wouldn’t want to discriminate anybody because they didn’t have a language, but it is certainly an asset if they have it. If they do have it, it’s something that we can provide bilingual bonuses for. If we can find people who can do the work and have the capacity that speak the language, obviously that’s a real asset.
I guess on that, where do they come from? Do we provide training? Does Aurora College provide training to a court worker? What are the qualifications that they require?
Quite honestly, the vast majority of the knowledge, skills, and ability these people have is on-the-job training. Whether they started in a law firm or whether they started working in a community where they had an opportunity to deal with legal issues, we take people who have the capacity and desire and we train them on the job, to be quite honest.
From that I conclude that obviously there is a high potential for hiring people with more than one language, if that was the interest of the department. I see that as an opportunity and I’m sure the Minister is aware of that.
My last question is just in follow up to my colleague Mr. Dolynny. What is our benchmark in terms of waiting period? Is there a number of months? Do we aim for three months or two months or four months? It sounds like there might be a national standard for that. Some details there would be good.
Before I go to Kim Schofield here, just to the Member’s last question, many of the individuals providing the court worker services can speak multiple languages. That is obviously something that is important to us. It’s just that we would never discriminate anybody if they couldn’t. I’d go to Ms. Schofield for specifics on the last question.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Ms. Schofield.
Thank you, Madam Chair. In the review of our business plan and the response from standing committee was that the standing committee would like us to have a 60-day or less waiting period for family law cases. As a result, we have put forward, through supplementary appropriation, the addition of one position which, if all our positions are filed and the addition of that position, it is expected that we would be able to maintain a 60-day waiting period within the family law portion of legal aid.
That’s great and fast work on the benchmark there. Thank you for that.
With regard to the earlier one, I hope the Minister doesn’t think I was accusing him of discrimination or anything here. I certainly wasn’t. I think, in terms of the languages, I did see that as an opportunity. I guess my last on that front might be, I think it’s important, if the Minister agrees, that it would be good to have some statistics and monitor that over time. Provide some updates on committee of what our capacity is in the department from the standpoint of court workers with potential language services.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I didn’t mean to suggest anything. I wouldn’t believe that. I know it’s not true. Absolutely, we will keep the Members posted on the types of individuals who are coming and providing these types of services and the types of skills they bring.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Bromley, anything further? Okay. Thank you. I have no one else on my list. We are on page 9-19, Justice, activity summary, legal aid services, operations expenditure summary, $5.905 million.
Agreed.
Page 9-20, Justice, activity summary, information item, legal aid services, active positions.
Agreed.
Page 9-23, Justice, activity summary, court services, operations expenditure summary, $11.446 million. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess quickly, would this be where specialized courts would be housed? I guess, just by way of working up gradually and changing the subject, the compensation for judges is an exercise that, I think, we’ve been going through at arm’s length and whatnot. Have some decisions been made? Has that been reported? Is that all done and being implemented and are the results public? Is that something we can hear about? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Abernethy.
Thank you, Madam Chair. The process is independent. We don’t actually get to decide on it. It’s decided for us. I tabled the report, I think, in the first week of this particular sitting and it’s done and official. I can’t remember the exact totals. I think it was a $6,000 increase in year one and CPI for three.
That’s good. I’ll look that report up. Thank you to the Minister.
Just moving on to the specialized courts here, I know the Minister and staff are very curious and intent on learning more about the potential here by way of prevention and that it’s seen as a real interest because of the crime bill and so on. I’m just wondering if we can really hear where the Minister is at in that process. I know other departments, have I heard ECE, Executive, no, Health and Social Services might be involved in these things too, and I want to know how that process is going generally. Thank you.
I did speak to this in the House the other day and gave some of the deadlines that we’re now faced with. This is a cooperative project between the Department of Health and Social Services, Education, Culture and Employment, Housing Corporation and Justice. It’s been taking a little longer than I think any of us would have liked, but it is continuing to move forward. Right now we hope to have a work plan in place by August 2012, like I said the other day.
Obviously, we’d like to be moving faster, but there is a significant amount of research that needs to be done, and the original project has broadened in its scope so that it actually has some additional focus on things such as crime prevention, community justice… Nope, this isn’t the right one. Sorry. Integrated case management. We want to, as part of this project, we’re looking more in depth into integrated case management across the departments. Diversion from court. Rather than just specialized courts, we want to be looking at things like having people exit before they even enter the court system, so there’s some more focus on diversion courts. Specialized courts is obviously one of the main focuses on this, and we obviously need the ability to identify and respond to systemic barriers for individuals seeking some sufficiency. It broadened a little bit.
The terms of reference are done. The work plan should be available in August and we hope to have something forward for some decision-making by committee on helping us decide where we want to go once that data is pulled together.
Thanks for those additional details or repeated details. I’m wondering, the terms of reference, is that something that gets provided to committee. Has that been provided to committee for input or where are we at on that? Thank you.
Sorry, I didn’t catch all of that. One of the things that we can tell you is the director of court services has recently got back from the Yukon and she has actually compiled a really comprehensive, sort of, report on that particular type of court, and I’d be happy to come and present that information to committee sooner than later. It’s going to obviously form just one piece of the building block to help us make an informed decision on how to move forward.
As far as the final decision point, we do need to pull all that information together. I think the timeline now starts talking in the winter. Obviously, we want to make sure we get as much of it done as soon as we can, and I’m trying to push a little faster than that. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. I believe the question was whether or not the terms of reference could be provided to committee. Minister Abernethy.
Sorry about that. I missed that part. Absolutely, we can share those.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. Bromley.
Madam Chair, could you repeat it? I missed that.
I believe the Minister said yes, he would provide terms of reference to the committee. Anything further, Mr. Bromley?
How do you spell that? No, I’m just kidding. No, that’s great, Madam Chair. This is an area that I think committee is very keen on. Obviously, we’re looking at the impacts of the crime bill coming down the pipe. I understand it’s already started and will continue to build, so I’m with the Minister in wanting to get things done a little quicker than the current timeline suggested, but more on that anon. That’s all I have for this page. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Page 9-23, activity summary, justice, court services, operations expenditure summary, $11.496 million.
Agreed.
