Seventy years after it was first launched, legal aid's principles of equality are a shadow of what they once were.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford returns to his office at the Ontario legislature after announcing the cancellation of retroactive cuts that have hit public health, child care and other municipal services.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
A year ago, Doug Ford’s election was seen as a harbinger of a populist realignment in Ontario and Canadian politics. Now polls suggest Ford has abysmally low personal approval ratings.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford laughs as Finance Minister Vic Fedeli presents the 2019 budget at the legislature in Toronto in April 2019.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn
There's an apparent emerging Doug Ford doctrine in Ontario of short-term gain for long-term pain. It threatens to embed long-term structural costs for the province and its taxpayers.
In a political dispute with Ottawa, Doug Ford’s Ontario government has stopped funding legal aid for refugee claimants. This 2017 photo shows a young asylum seeker being held by an RCMP officer and her father after crossing the border into Canada from the United States.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson
The recent decision by the Ontario government to drastically cut funds for legal aid will cause hardship for many low-income residents of Ontario and for refugees claimants.
Income shouldn’t restrict access to justice.
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Inconsistencies in how judges handle appeal cases and different levels of legal provision around the country can leave asylum seekers facing a lottery.
A woman at Yarl’s Wood detention centre in 2015.
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Many who represent themselves in court fail to make it through the process, have their case dismissed or lose what otherwise would have been a winning case.
It is bitterly ironic that in this, the 800th anniversary year of Magna Carta, there are threats from the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. This convention is Europe’s own Magna…
The Productivity Commission rightly identified widespread concerns that Australia’s civil justice system is too slow, too expensive and too adversarial.
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The Productivity Commission raised a few eyebrows when it called for an additional A$200 million for legal assistance services to disadvantaged Australians, who are “more susceptible to, and less equipped…
The halls of the Royal Courts of Justice shouldn’t have to throng with students.
Nick Garrod
Law students are doing more pro bono work than ever before. In 2014, 70% of all UK law schools now provide free legal services to individuals, groups and organisations. According to the latest LawWorks…
‘Which way is the door again?’
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It never gets any easier for justice minister Chris Grayling. Every month he seems to face fresh criticism over some new catastrophe in the justice system over which he presides. September is proving no…