BCIFV home > Media Release > October 12, 2004

For Immediate Release: October 12, 2004
Contact: Penny Bain, Executive Director, BCIFV
phone: 604.669.7055, 1.877.755.7055, or
pbain@bcifv.org or www.bcifv.org

Letter to the BC Attorney General re: Cuts to Legal Aid for Women.

October 12, 2004

The Honourable Geoff Plant
Attorney General
PO BOX 9044
STN PROV GOVT
Victoria BC
V8W 9E2

Dear Sir:

Re: Cuts to Legal Aid for Women

As chair of the Board of the BC Institute Against Family Violence, I feel compelled to write to you regarding provincial government cuts to legal aid and the severe impact that these cuts have on women, especially poor women in this Province.

According to a report by the Centre for Policy Alternatives and West Coast Leaf women seek family legal aid at twice the rate of men. By contrast, 80 per cent of people who access criminal legal aid are men. In 2002 the Liberal government cut legal aid by 40 per cent. The majority of these cuts affected legal aid for family disputes, divorce cases, people on social assistance and immigration law cases. According to the author of the report, Alison Brewin, the cuts led to a 58% decrease in referrals for lawyer in family cases since 2001, whereas criminal referrals only dropped by two per cent.

The government has stated that divorce is a private matter between two people and that the government only has the constitutional obligation to provide legal aid in cases where someone is charged with a criminal offense and may go to jail. In your effort to maintain funding for this purpose, you have reduced access for women to legal representation for themselves and their children who are victims of family violence far more than you have reduced access for men who are accused of committing crimes. The one exception is that women who fear for their safety and the safety of their children have an eight hour cap on their funding for legal aid while there is no cap on people (the majority of whom are men) who don’t want to go to jail as a result of criminal charges.

While we do not argue that the terms that are set out are based on the right of every criminally accused person to a fair trial as set out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the fact is that other rights are also set out in the Charter and these rights are ignored. I am referring to the right to life, liberty, and security of person. The harsh reality is that the use of legal aid services are not gender neutral. Creating policy in which criminal suspects (mostly men) are being provided with legal aid in order to protect their right to liberty, while family law litigants (mostly women) are being denied legal aid, puts them at greater risk of violence including lethal violence in the wake of separation from a violent partner.

Divorce is more that just a dispute between two persons. We have laws that govern every aspect of family breakdown. Without the benefits of legal aid, women and children will be forced to stay in lethal situations because they have no way out. This has far reaching consequences, particularly for the health and well being of abused women and their children. The irony is that the very men who assault them (the research bears this out) will indeed have access to criminal lawyers through legal aid to insure that they have their right to a legal defense! This is inherently biased against women, as well costly and counterproductive health and social policy.

The United Nations Committee on CEDAW, which is responsible for monitoring compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, has expressed concern that, in disproportionately implementing cuts in funding to services used by women, the provincial government is undermining women’s rights in British Columbia and has breached international obligations as a signatory to CEDAW.

Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms demands that the government advance the principle of gender equality and ensure the basic human rights of all of its citizens. In rejecting a gender analysis in the policy governing legal aid, the government has rejected its constitutional obligations as well as its obligation to serve all of the people of the province.

We urge you to re-consider this policy.

Respectfully,

Frances Grunberg
Chair

Cc Premier Gordon Campbell
The Honourable Rich Coleman, Solicitor General
The Honourable Murray Coell, The Minister for Community, Aboriginal and Women’s Services
The Honourable Ida Chong, Minister of State for Women’s and Senior’s Services
The Honourable Colin Hansen, Minister of Health Services