[MBates]

Originally Posted by Mr.Coffee

Thanks! Always amazing info from you and more or less answered my question/ devils advocate point. Couple follow ups;

What do you see the logical outcome of this is then? Basically, if a person is charged with a crime and legal aide no longer exists, I (think) what you’re saying is that the court still has to somehow arrange for a defense attorney if a defendant cannot afford one (is this right?) and, if so, is that the responsibility of the judge / court clerks or the defendant to demonstrate they can’t afford a lawyer to the judge instead of this other independent body that administered all of that?

Doesn’t a crime need to be prosecuted / heard within a set timeframe? Do you see risk then that this could delay court proceedings to an extent that crimes may not even be able to be heard because they lapse beyond that timeframe and then no day in court is even had and the charged simply just goes free?

These are fairly complicated issues but the short(ish) answers are:

1. In a world where there was no formal legal aid program, then every individual would have to apply to the court seeking state-funded counsel. In very general terms, if they establish their liberty or security of the person is at stake and they cannot reasonably afford to hire a lawyer then they will likely get a court order which compels the government to fund counsel. If there is no risk of jail time or if an individual can represent themselves just fine without a lawyer, they could still potentially be denied state-funded counsel.

In the last two fiscal years reported, Legal Aid Alberta [LAA] issued 52,712 and 59,599 Certificates respectively (this is not just criminal but all areas covered including family, immigration etc). I have not found a stat showing how many more applications they received but were denied coverage. Even if you ignore the rejected applications, I think it states the obvious that the justice system would very swiftly fail if it had to incorporate an extra 50,000 to 60,000 in-court applications annually.

2. If even a fraction of the above numbers ended up in court there would be a relative flood of criminal cases tossed for unreasonable delay. The factual basis to file stay applications would exist in a matter of weeks (available offered court dates for trials would be so far out as the system would become fully booked. Currently I have some trial time booked as far out as October of 2025, and that is with the system working before this whole issue arose).

If one assumes even the current government can understand it would by necessity have to replace the current legal aid administration with some Ministerial commanded alternative, the obvious move here is they are intending to cut as deep as they can.

For every criminal defendant represented by a legal aid funded lawyer that you manage to turn into a self-represented person you can fairly reliably double the amount of court time required to process that case. I would go so far as to say that is close to a standard operating procedure in our criminal court system.

EVERYONE in the system wants accused people who are represented by counsel. Judge, prosecutor, clerk, sheriff...all of those jobs are made significantly more difficult to do in the vast majority of cases with a self-represented accused.

The CBA has provided studies which estimate that every $1 dollar invested in front line legal aid yields far more in return on investment (full disclosure I have been part of preparing various access to justice CBA reports over the years).

https://twitter.com/user/status/1808640009635049969

A properly run legal aid system brings massive savings in both justice and health systems - and creates better outcomes for all in the vast majority of cases. It is the one and probably the only area where a public service can actually make you huge net budget savings by properly increasing your expenditures.

Now, with all of that, do I think LAA is running a perfect program? Far from it. Should the Minister keep track of what is going on to prevent abuse and waste? Of course.

But here's the thing...the Governance Agreement they just walked away from and kickstarted this whole gong show already had an express term that at any time it wanted the Minister could subject the full financials of LAA to inquiry by the Auditor General or a qualified financial professional.

https://open.alberta.ca/publications...ting-legal-aid

The idea the agreement had to be shredded because somehow LAA was operating wastefully and out of control and could not be properly governed by the Minister is dubious. Incidentally, LAA has an accomplished professional Board and publishes annual audited financials and a very detailed annual report.

https://www.legalaid.ab.ca/about/

So if the Minister continues to claim that 'ballooning costs' that he cannot understand are why all of this chaos is now needed, I sure hope someone asks him whether he has read all of the available information and why he did not send in the Auditor General as was his power under the existing agreement.

Oh wait, maybe he did not do that because it was last done in 2020...and well...LAA passed on the exact issues the Minister is now railing about [my emphasis added]:

At a high level, this analysis estimated the total costs avoided to the justice system in Alberta by LAA in 2017–2018 was approximately $131,656,000, and the estimated benefit of LAA to the justice system for every $1 spent was $1.36.

and

The department implemented our recommendation to ensure there are processes in place to measure, monitor and report on the quality, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of publicly funded legal aid services.

A review of documents provided by the department show it and LAA have worked together to develop and implement key performance indicators/performance measures to assess the functioning of the legal aid system.

As of December 2019, there are 14 measures approved and in place. LAA reports to the department monthly or annually, depending on the measure. Our review of recent LAA reporting to the department confirmed required performance measures reporting is being done.

https://www.oag.ab.ca/reports/oag-ju...-aoi-nov-2020/