Mr. Chairman, I just want to confirm that the Minister will provide us with the information on how much the department, the government has spent on outside legal services for the last year.
As well, I do not believe there is a government policy with respect to legal services. It may be a contract in legal services. It may be that there is a sort of ongoing practice going on within the department, but I would be very interested in looking at something more formal.
My point in raising the legal aid, Legal Services Board together with this is that I am well aware that there is a shortage of family law lawyers, and the way to address that is to revamp the local firms so they can give more time to family law. Because I think that that is the best source we have.
We will have less chance of getting family lawyers from down south. We will be better off trying to look after what we have so that they have the kind of work that pays so that they could have the luxury of doing family law and cleaning up some of those family law backlogs. So I look forward to receiving that information from the Minister. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.