In Australia, the Commonwealth (federal) government has developed partnership arrangements with the states and territorial legal aid commissions, community legal services and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services for the provision of civil legal aid.3 The agreement is a funding program designed to address legal needs based on the results of socio-legal research on the nature and. [...] In Canada after the federal government began the criminal legal aid cost- sharing program administered by the Department of Justice to support criminal legal aid in the provinces and territories in 1971-72 (later restructured as a contribution program), discussions were held with the provinces concerning the funding of civil legal aid. [...] Canada should adopt a national approach to meeting the civil legal needs of the public with the broad scope of the Justice for All movement and with the vision and bold intent of the access to justice movement in Canada in the 1970’s and 1980’s in which the national funding programs for legal aid were implemented. [...] The low scores on some aspects of access to justice in Canada in the WJP Rule of Law Index suggests that even the increased amount of money being spent on legal aid in Canada may not be sufficient to assure access to justice in Canada.8 Importantly, the rule of law indicators apply primarily to access to the courts. [...] However, the courts are only part of a much larger terrain and that is why we need a national access to justice strategy with the bold vision of justice for all that is now part of the global discourse and was at the core of the recommendations in the Action Committee on Civil and Family Justice report A Roadmap for Change that signaled the need to expand access to justice in Canada seven years ag.
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- Published in
- Canada
