The most widely read magazine for Canadian lawyers
Issue link: https://digital.canadianlawyermag.com/i/50826
and delegate cases. Bond, in a Dec. 18 letter to Legal Services Society executive director Mark Benton, said the executive wanted assurance when agent contracts were affirmed there was an "equitable allocation of referrals" from these agents and no ability to "play favourites." It was concerned about those clients who had not specified a lawyer or did not have a previous relationship with a lawyer. Bond also asked that consider- ation be given to applicants from the local LSS office for agent appointments. Effective Jan. 11, Kamloops lawyers stopped providing duty counsel services. Graham A. Kay, chairman of the Kamloops Legal Aid Tariff Lawyers' Committee, sent a letter to the LSS board and Attorney General Michael de Jong, which stated the Kamloops bar "will stop providing all duty counsel services." The decision was made following the announcement to close the local LSS office (one of five clo- sures) and "the provincial government's failure to protect and maintain sufficient funding for legal aid in B.C." Kay cited earlier tariff reductions, which have hindered low-income individ- uals access to justice. "The recent decision of the LSS board to eliminate five regional offices represents the final straw." Kay said members are familiar with local agents and call centres. "We have witnessed undue delays in counsel being retained, sometimes for weeks, and occa- sionally months," Kay said in the let- ter, adding agents were useful in smaller communities but should not be the rule. The letter expressed skepticism that the LSS would be able to maintain service levels to individuals needing it and that assurances given to the public were "exag- gerated or downright false." Kay's letter drew a rebuttal from LSS chairman D. Mayland McKimm, who pointed out that by cutting the funding for the regional offices, it would lead to restoration of services that "Kay men- tions as having been previously cut." McKimm maintained that Kay is "incorrect in his assertions that local agents are only successful in smaller communi- ties and take longer to make referrals." LSS statistics show in 2008-09, the local agent for Abbotsford and Chilliwack processed more applications than the Kamloops regional centre. Also over the past five years, the stats show the average referral time for criminal cases in Abbotsford was 6.2 days compared to 8.1 in Kamloops, and 3.9 days compared to 11.7 for family cases. "The primary factor in referral time is the willingness of lawyers in a particular community to take the work, not the office that takes the applica- tion," McKimm pointed out. An LSS spokesman confirmed that lawyers from other areas were being brought into Kamloops to fill needed duty counsel positions. Kay tells Canadian Lawyer: "When we have heard that a lawyer is coming, we have either talked to that person by phone or a couple of lawyers will talk to them when they are here" to impress upon them the frustra- tion of local lawyers. "We are trying to discourage them from coming." — JEAN SORENSEN jean _sorensen@telus.net Specialized Crowns needed to curb domestic violence: lawyer Turner, who has been an active participant in bringing forward reform programs. "We had one in B.C. but then funding was cut," she says, adding that a team of B specialized prosecutors with training in domestic violence cases should be based in high-population areas such as Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster, and could also act as resource individuals for prosecutors throughout B.C. A specialized group of prosecutors could play a key role in stemming the tide of domestic violence as they could better assess case information and advise whether the courts should hold an accused in custody or have the individual released on bail. Turner was commenting on the B.C. solicitor general office's annoucement of new initiatives to curb domestic violence following Victoria's Peter Lee inquest, a tragedy that saw Lee murder his wife, young son, and in-laws before committing suicide on Sept. 4, 2007. Turner was critical of many of the new initiatives announced saying they were programs that had already been created by community entities or they were practices already in place. She says B.C.'s government during the 1990s led the way in reforming the system to curb domestic violence but many of these pro- grams were cut or changed during the past decade. It had prompted much of the work to be carried out by grassroots organizations rather than government. Turner, who represented the Ending Violence Association of B.C. at the Lee inquest, is in favour of the government's plan to reform bail conditions for sus- pected high-risk abusers. However, more specialized procedures ranging from police through to Crowns are needed to make an assessment of whether an indi- vidual is high-risk. Also, she says, more co-operation is needed between police and social agency jurisdictions to determine if there have been incidents in the past that are needed to assess the individual. She favoured the solicitor general's recommendation of implementing a death review panel looking at domestic violence deaths and working with the coroner's office. Ontario had a similar structure and it had proven effective, she says. — JS www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com M ARCH 2010 15 ritish Columbia needs specialized Crown attorneys if the province hopes to curb the long-standing problem of domestic violence. Now, one in every 10 cases is going forward in provincial courts, says Victoria lawyer Diane