INADEQUATE

It is no accomplishment for one of the richest societies in the world to provide legal aid only to the destitute while providing limited access to tax-paying working poor and middle-class persons who cannot afford to respond to criminal charges.

Also unimpressive is to only cover the destitute if there is a risk of imprisonment or job loss. The fact that receiving a criminal record in and of itself can seriously compromise a person’s life is not relevant to our legal aid regime.

INEFFICIENT

The fastidious procedures governing the issuance of legal aid mandates and payment of fees consume valuable time that defense lawyers could otherwise devote to actually defending clients.

NEQUITABLE

The promise of equal justice cannot be fulfilled without equitably funded representation.

For so-called lesser offences the government pays private criminal defence attorneys 
$ 330.00 and for serious offences where the accused risks a prison sentence- the fee is $ 550.00:  

This lump sum fee is paid whether a case ends in a plea bargain or a trial- no matter how much time a lawyer devotes to the file.

An effort-reward analysis clearly favors pleading a client guilty over going to trial. This dangerously risks skewing a lawyer’s advice to a client in the direction of a guilty plea when the client may in fact have a triable defence.

The present regime is therefore not ethically neutral.

NATIONAL EMBARASSMENT

Québec’s legal aid regime has distantly lagged behind the legal regimes of all of the other provinces of Canada for a very long time.

FEDERAL COMPLICITY

The federal government has contributed to the deplorable state of legal aid in Québec having unilaterally decided years ago to cut federal funding to Québec’s legal aid budget from approximately 50% to 14 %.

Québec’s reaction to this federal move has been, uncharacteristically, to do nothing- ensuring a perfect harmony of federal-provincial complacency.

PROJET RABATS ROUGES

I am a founding participant of PROJET RABATS ROUGES, a movement that began in November 2019 which unites criminal defence lawyers from across Québec who are advocating for a total reform of legal aid in Québec.

We are sending one clear message to the government:

We must reinvent legal aid for the Québec of tomorrow in the interest of achieving true equal access to justice for the most vulnerable members of our society !

MY COMMITMENT TO LEGAL AID REFORM

I support Projet Rabats Rouges in solidarity with my criminal defence colleagues across Québec and will continue to advocate for the reform of legal aid in Québec.

I support the slogan of Projet Rabats Rouges: JUSTICE NOW !

LEGAL AID IN QUÉBEC

An obsolete and unjust regime

The right of the most vulnerable members of our society to be defended free of charge against criminal charges dates back to the Québec Legal Aid Act of 1972.

There could not be a bigger disconnect between the vision of 1972 and the reality of 2020 – a stellar example of policy failure.

Today, legal aid is inadequate, inefficient and inequitable.

Everyone deserves fair day in court...

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