I was reading some articles lately discussing about the topic on how the legal aid system is failing in BC as financially there is not enough money for lawyers to help everyone. As a result, there were some situations such as lawyers being urged to not work on legal aid cases. Some people dub it as a legal aid blackout. Generally speaking, I do not think that BC legal aid needs more funding. Alright, before anyone jumps to conclusion be sure to read my entire post.

As you all may know with my situation, initially I did use some legal aid services. So the immediate reaction would be how could I say it doesn’t need more funding then when a person like myself needed such a service? Think of it like this. If every time to get to work the city stated that you must drive a car through a hazardous road which causes you thousands of dollars in mechanic fees everyday would it make sense to say the solution is to give mechanics more money so that people can afford to get to work?

Or pretend if you were traveling from Vancouver to Toronto for some kind of medical emergency a country says you must first travel west bound, basically through Asia and Europe, as opposed to simply going east within Canada. Would it make sense there to say that the healthcare system needs more money to solve the huge travel expense for people who can’t afford plane tickets for that type of travel? Unless I am crazy, I think everyone would naturally react by saying “Why should I have to go through that thorn filled road with a car to begin with?” or “Why can’t I just fly straight east to Toronto instead?”

So to me, that is the reason why I say the BC legal aid does not need more funding because I think the system itself is broken which causes the crazy financial burden on those seeking justice in the first place. Why aren’t people more focused in fixing the tedious path and logistics of the legal/justice system first? Like with my documented example, surely you can see how inefficient it is both financially and productively. Wouldn’t it make sense to fix that first and stop it from being so expensive or time consuming in the first place?

Rest assured, there are a lot of lawyers and judges that want to do good for people. Likewise, like any other industry there are probably a lot who just care about getting money. From my experience, the road of the court system given to regular people are not designed to be easily accessible for an average person. In my view, that needs to be fixed first. If anything, funding should be used to fix that first and foremost. I am doubtful that it will ever happen in this day and age though.