Mr. Chair, legal aid has expanded its operations in the area of outreach. There is now an individual that goes out to many of the smaller communities dealing with sometimes issues that cannot be dealt with, either by private lawyers or by the legal aid clinic lawyers, so there is an effort from legal aid to have actual individuals go out and help people, particularly in the smaller communities where access to justice is a large problem, there being no resident lawyers in most of those communities.
With respect to the issue of the library, as I have mentioned earlier, the expense of continuing the library in view of the use was simply thought that this was not a good use of our resources. Some history on this is that originally, the library was set up in 1978, and there were libraries in many of the communities. The legal profession was far different in those days. There were no online services to be utilized.
As time went on, that changed in the early 1990s. The satellite libraries were closed down in Inuvik, Hay River, and Fort Smith. Not too much time after that, the library in the courthouse in Yellowknife was reduced in size to about a third of its former size. Most lawyers now use online services, and in fact, if you go to a lawyer's office now, large firm or small, you tend not to see a library that was once seen to be a great asset in a law firm.
The outreach from legal aid has been increased, and the use of the library, the traditional resource of lawyers has fallen precipitously over the last ten or 15 years. So therefore, to be most effective in having legal outreach, we think we should concentrate our assets in such areas of having more legal aid outreach and reduce costs in other areas, specifically the library. Thank you, Mr. Chair.