Thank you, Madam Chair. I would be pleased to provide this new way of making a presentation to the Minister of Justice. Particularly in my riding that I represent, Nahendeh, a lot of the services in the Justice department provided to the six communities that I represent has an impact on the way people do
business, especially with justice and the court services. They have always expressed concern about the workload of the court circuits and recently, last year, the court circuit was extended to about once every six months. Even though I am not really getting an outcry of justice not being provided because of justice being delayed, it is having an impact on people getting some of their legal concerns out of the way, Madam Chair.
What happens is every time there is a delay or a...I was going to say stay of proceedings, but it's more of a deferral. Every time an item gets deferred for constituents and clients of legal aid, it means another six weeks that people have to wait. In some cases, you do need that time because it really is difficult to get a legal aid lawyer, but aside from that, I don't know if the department has undertaken a review of how much the impact the six week-circus has had...I beg your pardon, six-week circuit has had at all because it has been in effect for about a year. I know it impacts how our JPs do business in our communities and our JPs are mostly volunteers. They have full-time day jobs and I am hearing that because of the length between court proceedings, that a lot of the workload is being delegated from the Territorial Court to the JPs and the JPs are actually holding trial.
I think the concern is they are holding more and more trials and they have day jobs. What is happening, Madam Chair, is court proceedings are going late into the evenings during justice of the peace days. I think Fort Simpson has it, it used to be once every two weeks, but I am not sure if they increased their rotations just for the JPs alone; I am not sure. It has an impact on the person providing the service. I don't know what is needed, if we need to provide more services.
The main thing is our department should have a look at how to best provide these services just to ensure there isn't a delay in providing services to our communities.
I touched on legal aid earlier, too. It's quite often the case in the communities and the regions that when the client is up there in front of the judge and the judge says where is your lawyer, and they say they having difficulty getting a lawyer, that really is the case. It's not that that person is intending to abuse the system and get things deferred so he's out of the courts longer. I don't believe that's the case at all. There really is difficulty getting a lawyer. In Yellowknife, constituents or people can just phone around and make appointments, actually go and see which lawyer is best suited for their particular case. That's just not the case in the smaller communities. Often you have day jobs. You are leaving messages for lawyers and lawyers are in court here. Just to touch base, that first phone call, may take weeks and that is not even getting the lawyer retained. Therein lies the other problem. You have to make the initial contact, so that our legal aid system can catch up with them, too.
So there is a little bit of gap in terms of the legal aid system. That still needs massaging and work. Quite often when that person is phoning around for a lawyer and discussing his particular case, that's not the one that shows up in the community. I know that, again, we are going to have a real good look at how we improve that service, as well.
I don't know if it's up to us to tell lawyers to be more sensitive to people in the regions and try to be more responsive to them, but even though it's legal aid, a service provided by our government, I don't know how much of a percentage of the workload each lawyer contributes to the government or to legal aid services as opposed to how much money it would make on an individual basis. I don't know if that's a barrier at all, Madam Chair, if legal aid provides less of a fee to that lawyer. That's something I really think we should also pay attention to, Madam Chair.
I know the parameters of legal aid services change a bit where we are able to take more cases that involve personal issues such as divorces, helping people with adoptions and that kind of area. That's something that I am very supportive of, but I think there's a little bit of...I don't know how much of an uptake of lawyers we have for those particular cases. It seems that even though we are providing that service, it's a bit of a barrier to some people. Some people think that it's not available. I don't know if it's a case of more public education getting the news out there that this is a service that we provide. Often in the small communities, Members and constituents are really frustrated that I have this personal problem and it's a huge thing and I don't know how to do it, but they don't know that we have the programs and services available to provide assistance to them; childcare for adoptions, or even divorces. That's something we are going to have to publicize a lot more, Madam Chair. Perhaps I will end my comments there. I notice I am getting to the end of my allotted time. I would gladly get back on the list, Madam Chair, if you will. Mahsi.