CANADA'S TOP JUDGE SLAMS 'INACCESSIBLE JUSTICE'

The CBA is the largest national lawyer association in Canada. It represents 37,000 lawyers, judges, notaries, law teachers and students. Its annual conference was held at the end of August 2013 in Saskatoon, and special invitees and speakers were Chief Justice of Canada Beverley McLachlin, Justice Minister Peter MacKay and CBC's Peter Mansbridge.

Delegates at the annual meeting of the Canadian Bar Association conference in Saskatoon (CBA) were discussing the merits of several proposed legal reforms, some of which derive from a new 54 page report by the CBA, titled Reaching Equal Justice, which was released at conference. The report pointed to severely unequal access to justice in Canada.

Beverly McLachlin, Chief Justice 
the Supreme Court of Canada, ' 
(Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin then spoke to this concern, saying that ensuring that Canadians are able to access the system, is the most pressing challenge facing the administration of justice in this country. She conveyed that peoples' lives are being ruined when they can't get access to justice. McLachlin said, "We know that there are a lot of needs. People just swallow their pain and their loss and live with it, I guess, in some unsatisfactory way feeling they can't get justice."

THE CANADIAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND CHILD REMOVAL

The Canadian Bar Association B.C. Branch website has a page entitled ‘Child Protection and Removal.’ Valuable advice is offered there to parents of removed children as well as to ordinary citizens with responsibility to report suspected abuse or neglect of children. These look like diametrically opposed interests but not from the perspective of the law.

You can of course read it in detail by going immediately to the site but I will highlight some of the offerings there to whet your appetite.

YOU SHOULD KNOW WHEN YOU NEED A LAWYER