Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in almost every province and territory, organizations have been set up to provide essential legal information to the public at large. These nonprofit and nongovernmental groups believe that citizens cannot fully understand, much less exercise their legal rights unless they are informed and understand the laws that affect them. These groups differ from a lawyer’s office or a legal aid clinic by providing general information on the law rather than legal advice for specific problems. Mr. Speaker, I was curious about public legal information in the NWT, and through the Canadian Bar Association, I was directed to a defunct page of the Department of Justice here in the Northwest Territories. I would like to advise the Minister, if I may, that the department ought to address this before it’s more than just a curious MLA trying to find information. Luckily, Mr. Speaker, Google exists, and it directed me to the Northwest Territories Legal Services Board. Although it has no website, when I called their number, I was redirected to legal aid, which is by no means responsible or expected to provide public legal education. I wasn’t giving up so easily though, Mr. Speaker, and Google, rather than the information provided by the Department of Justice for the public, came through again. The Law Society of the Northwest Territories is the governing body for all lawyers in the Northwest Territories, and thankfully, also provides some resources for public legal education. All these dead ends shows that this territory lacks the public legal education provided in almost every other jurisdiction, but at least we have the law library, or not. Recently, the Department of Justice announced plans to close the territory’s only law library by the end of this fiscal year, and I quote from the Minister, “it is just not economically responsible to keep it open.”
Mr. Speaker, no library was ever opened to be economically advantageous. They exist as a resource for the public to expand its knowledge and awareness through having free and easily accessible sources of information. Libraries are important, a law library even more so, and if the government goes through with this policy, the NWT will be the only province or territory without a physical law library. Mr. Speaker, I want to ensure accessible, free, and public legal education and information is available to Northerners, and I will have questions later for the Minister of Justice. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
