Ian Mulgrew: Law Society divided, access-to-justice fuse burns

After nearly two decades of a continuing access-to-justice crisis, the Law Society of B.C. remains divided on a solution and can’t agree on even token measures.

The lack of action is an indictment of the legal regulator after a generation of non-stop alarums about barriers to justice and a threatened legal aid strike April 1. Phil Riddell, of Philip A. Riddell Law Corporation, dismissed the idea out of hand: “I think it is presumptuous of us to say that sitting down with someone in the courthouse and chatting with them for half an hour in some way provides me with some level of education and some benefit to the person I’m talking too.”

Add chronic legal aid underfunding with the growth of charlatans offering services and the decline in public confidence should come as no surprise. The aim was to give lawyers a first-hand look at the problems of the underclass, help the mostly over-achieving white folk understand the life of a disabled person living in the Downtown Eastside or a First Nations’ family on a rural reserve.

The Legal Aid Task Force presented its report at the March 2017 bencher meeting and Len Doust presented his public commission report in 2011.

If TransLink was operated like BC Legal Aid the buses would only run from 3 AM to 6 AM.

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