Legal Aid: Deal Ends Ontario Lawyer Standoff
Ontario criminal lawyers are ending an eight-month boycott of major legal aid cases under a lucrative new seven-year deal with the province.
Ontario Attorney-General Chris Bentley yesterday announced the agreement that ends one of the longest standoffs ever in the Ontario legal community.
With it comes a promise of five % annual increases in the hourly legal aid fee that lawyers are paid for criminal, family, immigration and mental health cases for the next seven years, starting Feb. 1, 2010, pending cabinet approval.
The hourly rate paid for criminal work will go up by 40.5% by the end of the deal in April 2015.
“We worked very hard with the legal organizations on how to best use the money so we improve the service to the clients, make a more effective justice system . . . and also make sure the providers of the service receive fair compensation to keep them in the system,” Bentley, a London MPP and former defence lawyer, said.
Last fall, the Liberal government announced a $150-million infusion into Legal Aid Ontario, an agency that helps low-income people pay for legal services, but the details of where the money would go hadn’t been worked out.
That announcement, which was the biggest boost to legal aid ever, was in the middle of the boycott by Ontario criminal lawyers who argued their pay had drastically fallen behind, leaving them barely able to cover overhead and expenses.
The current gross hourly legal aid rate for a senior lawyer is $96.96. On Feb. 1, 2010, it will rise to $101.81.
By the end of the agreement, the rate will top out at $136.43 an hour.
In addition, the province will follow the funding recommendations of the recent Code and Lesage Review, headed by law professor Michael Code and former Ontario Superior Court chief justice Patrick Lesage, on how the system should handle major cases.
Bentley said the province will rely on a smaller roster of lawyers specializing in big cases, such as homicides and other complex crimes, who will be paid at a higher rate starting next month at $120.02 an hour and topping out in 2015 at $161.05 an hour.
Bentley thanked all the legal groups that provided advice, including the Ontario Criminal Lawyer’s Association, which led the boycott, calling the discussions “very productive.”
The association agreed to a 60-day deadline to solve the crisis last November, and two weeks ago said it would expand the boycott to other court levels if there was no resolution by a deadline Monday.
Other details of the deal include:
€ Additional funding for enhanced family law and poverty law services.
€ Block fees for standard criminal cases.
€ Higher legal aid fees for expert defence witnesses.
Bentley said the outcome is a transformation of the agency that “not only survives, but thrives.”
“(It’s) a seven-year agreement that’s going to make sure that legal aid is going to be strong and sustainable, work for those who need it and be fair to those who provide the service for those seven years.”
The program has been on life support for years. Between 1988 and 2002, there was no increase to the hourly rate and subsequent increases until last September didn’t come close to covering lawyers’ business expenses.
The boycott seemed to help spur the reforms, said Ontario Criminal Lawyer’s Assocation president Paul Burstein.
He said the move demonstrated “that we, the service providers, play an essential role in making this social program function.”
Crimainal lawyers, he said, “have been shoring up this social program for the last 20-odd years by huge donations of unpaid time and all sorts of extra effort that the service providers were no longer prepared to contribute.”
He said the agreement shows “the government has signaled its commitment to this social program” and will help ensure the best lawyers will stay with it.
James Morton, past president of the Ontario Bar Association, said the solution stopped a pending disaster in the courts.
“If the boycott had been extended, it would have caused some real problems across the province,’ he said.
He called the deal “very creative.”
“It’ll certainly make a heck of a difference,” he said.
Local London criminal lawyer Clay Powell, who acknowledged a crisis in the funding but was willing to buck the boycott, was also impressed with the deal.
“It’s good for everybody,” he said. “It’s a step in the right direction.
Jane Sims is a Free Press justice reporter.
LFPRESS