DECEMBER 2016
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HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM THE CANADIAN FORUM ON CIVIL JUSTICE
The Canadian Forum on Civil Justice wishes you the very best this holiday season! We look forward to bringing you new research and access to justice news and updates in 2017!
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An increasing amount of research and data point to the value of using both legal and non-legal services to address civil justice problems. For members of society who experience social exclusion, the ability to jointly access these resources bears additional significance. Canadian Forum on Civil Justice Senior Research Fellow, Dr. Jennifer Leitch discusses the merits of a multidisciplinary approach to access to justice, and the Cost of Justice research study that she has begun on this theme, in a paper that is published on the CFCJ website here.
Dr. Leitch explains that the goal of this study is ultimately to explore what services, information or support might help people to address the broader scope of challenges they face related to their legal problems and, what benefits might be attributed to the provision of a broader scope of services that offers an expanded concept of access to justice.
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Sarah McCoubrey, a lawyer and a founding partner at Calibrate Solutions, is well-known in the access to justice community. She has been integral to several provincial and national campaigns that have sought to disseminate information, research and resources pertaining to a number of access to justice issues. We recently sat down with Sarah for our Access to Justice Advocate series to talk about her work, shifts in the access to justice landscape and what needs to be done to improve the accessibility of our civil justice system. The interview with Sarah was conducted by CFCJ Research Assistant, Lucas Gindin and can be viewed in full here.
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The Legal Health Check-Up Project continues to show its merits as a tool for documenting unmet legal needs, and as a way for community services and agencies to connect users who are experiencing justiciable problems with the services they require. In this latest update on the expanding Legal Health Check-Up Project (for earlier blogs visit the CFCJ website here, here and here), CFCJ Senior Research Fellow Dr. Ab Currie highlights several ways that the Legal Health Check-Up forms can offer useful insight into the legal problems that people experience and, by extension, offer a means to identify areas of legal need. Read Dr. Currie’s latest blog on the Legal Health Check-Up Project here.
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CFCJ Research Assistant, Mitchell Perlmutter, writes about his experience at this year’s Civil Justice and Economics Conference in a blog posted on the CFCJ website here. There is a significant amount of work that needs to be done to improve the accessibility and economic efficiency of Canada’s civil justice system but, as the presentations and discussions at the Civil Justice and Economics Conference indicate, there are individuals, groups and organizations across the country who continue to make efforts to improve access to justice a priority. The work that is being done is encouraging.
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The Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters recently launched a major project to develop and publish a Status Report on the State of Access to Justice in Canada. As a part of this project, the Action Committee invites organizations, courts, tribunals, committees and others working in access to justice to complete the corresponding survey in English (here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/A2JSurvey) or French (here: https://fr.surveymonkey.com/r/FR-A2J).
Please note: the survey deadline has been extended to December 31, 2016.
The Action Committee has also launched a new “Justice Development Goals” website. The Honourable Thomas Cromwell explains that one of the main motivations behind the creation of this new website was to “present the 9 Justice Development Goals in plain language so that the most important justice stakeholders - the public - can join us in our journey towards meeting these goals.” Read Justice Cromwell’s blog about the newly launched Justice Development Goals website, published on the CFCJ website here.
The Canadian Forum on Civil Justice is pleased to continue to support, and to play a leading role in initiatives on behalf of the Action Committee.
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CANADIAN FORUM ON CIVIL JUSTICE 2016 ROUND-UP
It has been a very busy year for staff and researchers at the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice. If you have missed any of our newsletters, A2J blogs or research news or, if you are a recent subscriber to our newsletter, here are some must-read publications from this year:
Problèmes juridiques quotidiens et les coûts de la justice au Canada Fiche Descriptive
The Data Deficit: The Case For Improving Court Records For Future Access To Justice Research Fact Sheet
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ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT(OECD) ACCESS TO JUSTICE MEETING
CFCJ Cost of Justice Project Principal Investigator and Osgoode Hall Law Professor, Dr. Trevor Farrow, was one of several international experts at the OECD’s recent meetings on the theme of effective access to justice. In recent years, the OECD has made the topic of access to justice a priority and these meetings offered a platform to share in discussions about access to justice research, legal needs and legal service delivery.
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The CFCJ was thrilled to partner with the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice (CIAJ) for the recent Civil Justice and Economics Conference. In addition to a presentation by Dr. Trevor Farrow, Dr. Les Jacobs and Dr. Pierre Noreau on “The Costs of Justice”, CFCJ staff and research alliance members were among the attendees at this event who contributed to presentations and discussions on the economics of our civil justice system, a theme that parallels our SSHRC-funded research on the Cost of Justice. We are grateful to the CIAJ for organizing this conference and for allowing us to partner with them for such an important and timely event.
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HOLIDAY HOURS
The Canadian Forum on Civil Justice will be closed for the holidays beginning December 13, 2016. We will reopen on January 3, 2017.
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
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