Canadian Lawyer

10 A U G U S T 2 0 1 7 w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m suspensions to the program. Jawad Kassab, the executive lead for LAO's refugee and immigration program, says the agency's board of directors authorized the use of $6 million in defi- cit funds to stretch out services in the hope that the federal government will come through with the funds before November. "So it's going to be a tough, tough thing, but without any money at all from the federal government, it will be very difficult to continue beyond November," Kassab says. He says the initial plan was to first sus- pend particular services, but as the agency is going to stretch all services through the summer, there would be a complete suspension of all refugee and immigration services in November. Kassab says this is part of a nationwide problem. In late June, B.C.'s Legal Service Society announced that it would stop accepting applications for immigration and refugee cases on Aug. 1 due to a lack of funding. The LSS blamed the global refugee crisis for a 145-per-cent increase in demand in B.C. over the last three years while govern- ment funding has not kept up. Since 2002, the federal government has contributed $11.5 million every year to six provinces for refugee legal aid, of which LAO has received around $7 million each year. The federal provincial governments provided a one-time injection of an addi- tional $7.7 million for LAO in December 2016 to help address a shortfall in 2016- 2017. The federal budget that was released in March announced $8.6 million for Ontario for two years before returning to $7 mil- lion for the three years after. But LAO says it needs more in order to meet demand, and if it doesn't receive it, immigration and refugee services could be suspended from November until March 2018. "We cannot continue to run a car on fumes," says Kassab. Blanshay says there must be another solution other than shutting the whole program down, which he says will have grave ramifications. "I don't deny there are significant finan- cial demands on Legal Aid Ontario," he says. "All I'm saying is that there have got to be more reasonable viable solutions than locking the door and saying 'closed, out of business, no more legal aid for refugees and immigrants.'" Kassab says LOA is looking internally at whether the agency can improve its cost effectiveness and efficiency. LAO is also evaluating how it assesses applicants for financial eligibility. In a statement sent to Canadian Law- yer, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould said the Department of Justice is actively working with other departments and pro- vincial governments to try to address increases in demand. — ALEX ROBINSON \ AT L A N T I C \ C E N T R A L \ P R A I R I E S \ W E S T REGIONAL WRAP-UP Judge-caused delay at issue in Manitoba case L ast summer, in R. v. Jordan, the Supreme Court of Canada essentially told Canadian criminal courts to hurry up. The Supreme Court ruled that if provincial court cases were not con- cluded in 18 months and more serious Superior Court cases were not wrapped up in 30 months, the delay — unless attributable to the defence or due to some "exceptional circumstance" — would be considered "presumptively unreasonable." But in Jordan, the Supreme Court made no mention of the judiciary meeting any specific deadlines for delivering judgments. Now the issue of judicial delay, in a Jordan context, has arisen in Manitoba, Alberta and Ontario and possibly elsewhere. In the Manitoba case, R. v. K.G.K., a man was arrested on April 11, 2013 and his trial concluded Jan. 21, 2016. But it took the trial judge nearly nine months to deliver a guilty verdict. The day before the verdict, the accused filed a motion for delay. The trial judge recused himself on the issue and the matter went before Man- itoba Queen's Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal. He concluded — after deliberat- ing another four months — that the time a judge takes to reach a verdict should not be part of any Jordan calculation. In dismissing the defence motion, Joyal concluded that while "the nine-month delay might be regrettable and perhaps . . . long, it is not possible to describe it as an unconscionable delay." That did not sit well with the accused's Winnipeg lawyer in the case, Kathy Bueti. "The verdict took nine months," Bueti says, "and we were never provided a reason for the delay. This cannot be an acceptable standard." An exasperated Bueti says the trial judge's delay — if added to the additional delay occasioned by the chief justice reaching a decision on her motion — adds up ". . . to 13 months directly attributable to the judges making up their minds and nothing else. Nothing else was happening." Bueti is seeking to appeal the chief justice's ruling on delay. She does not expect to get into court on that matter until later this year or early 2018. While Bueti is not making any predictions about this particular case, she remains certain that the issue of judicial delay, under the new Jordan regime, will inevitably wind up in front of the Supreme Court. — GEOFF ELLWAND P R A I R I E S Legal Aid Ontario threatens to suspend immigration services Continued from page 9

• Cover