Legal Aid Service Delivery in Rural and Remote Communities across Canada: Issues and Perspectives in the Context of COVID-19
Part A: Introduction
The objective of this study is to better understand the issues, challenges, and promising practices with regards to legal aid service delivery in rural and remote areas in Canada. The study aims to address the following research questions:
- What are the demographic characteristics of those accessing legal aid in rural and remote regions; the type of challenges they are facing and how have these challenges been addressed by legal aid plans?
- What are the legal needs of legal aid clients living in rural and remote areas?
- What are the type of legal services available for legal aid clients living in rural and remote communities?
- What are the types of technology available for legal aid clients living in rural and remote areas to access legal aid and the court system?
- To what extent do legal aid clients who speak a minority official language or Indigenous languages have access to services in their language of choice in rural and remote areas?
- What are the challenges legal aid plans are facing in providing legal services in rural and remote areas, and what initiatives have been put in place to incentivize/facilitate legal aid lawyers to provide services in rural and remote areas?
- What are the costs/funding available for providing legal aid in rural areas in comparison to urban centres, and has this been impacted by COVID-19?
- How has COVID-19 impacted access to legal aid services and the courts for those who live in rural and remote areas?
- What is the impact of the increased use of technology in the provision of criminal legal aid in rural regions including:
- The impact of increased government funding to improve Internet access in rural regions across Canada
- The type of clients that are having the most difficulty with technology and the reason for these difficulties
- The type of technology used by legal aid plans in providing legal services remotely to legal aid clients
- The impact of these technologies on the relationship between legal aid lawyers, legal aid staff and their clients.
Two data collection methods were used to address the overarching objective and these research questions. The first was a review of the literature – primarily in Canada, but tangentially in other jurisdictions – on rural and remote delivery of legal aid and legal services. The bibliography that resulted from this review is in Appendix 1, and the findings are presented in Part C of this report.
The second method was key informant interviews. Telephone interviews were conducted with 17 key respondents from each of the provinces and territories. These respondents were either directly involved in or had oversight of delivery of legal services in rural and remote areas of their jurisdictions. They included executive directors and managing lawyers of provincial or regional Legal Aid offices and community clinics, executive directors with pro bono organizations and law foundations, and community engagement coordinators for legal aid bodies or law foundations. They were selected because of their knowledge of delivery issues to rural and remote areas of their province/territory, based either on their direct activities, their oversight role, and/or their geographic location in the province or territory. While respondents were identified based on their experience relevant to this study, due to the small sample size their responses are not intended to be representative of any larger population of legal program administrators.
The interview guide (see Appendix 3) was built directly around the research questions, and was developed in interaction with the steering committee for this study and focussed on the three areas described above:
- a description of clients in rural/remote areas, their needs and challenges;
- service provision issues in rural and remote communities of their jurisdiction; and
- impacts of the pandemic in their jurisdiction.
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