...ever so conscientious, and we've done travels on this bill and others. You know, this bill is very interesting and it is trying to address the larger public
interest goal of making access to legal services and legal counsel more available to those residents in the NWT who qualify for legal aid. I think everybody is aware of the shortage of lawyers not only here but everywhere in Canada, and we have heard over the years about the serious backlog in family law files and criminal files, which are the other...Probably the criminal don't have as much of a waiting list as family files but, at any rate, we are very well aware of those backlogs and we understand that this is an effort to address those.
So that's the public interest question, but there's a very real issue that we are dealing with here and that is that in the process we don't want to create a situation where our legal aid lawyers may find themselves in any type of conflict of interest situation, whether by perception or actual, and we take those comments given to us by the private practitioners, lawyers, very seriously and, I believe, we have tried to address those in our committee hearing. It's also important for us to put that on record here so that we give assurance and comfort to the public that we have addressed them.
So I'd like to ask the Minister a couple of questions that were not addressed in much detail in any of the opening comments. That has to do with the fact that it is my understanding that the scenario being contemplated in this legislation where the legal aid office is presently allowed to, or they do practice, having two lawyers from the legal aid office representing both sides of a file; say, for example, in family law cases. So could I just get confirmation from the Minister or Ms. Austin that, in fact, this has been going on and it's been an accepted practice and that this legislation is trying to formalize that? Thank you.