Tag Archives: bc law

Reading That Trinity Western Law University Story

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I was reading this news in the media recently about how there was this law school called Trinity Western University that has a program that teaches law. From what I gather the school apparently has some kind of personal conduct pledge that states students are restricted to sex between a man and a women. Because of that the law society voted to blacklist the school and essentially making it an unaccredited institution to study law. This was the first video I saw when looking it up:

I am no lawyer, but from what I gather from reading everything essentially that code of conduct is perceived as discrimination against gay people. So I suppose in theory if you allow people to practice law who have those kinds of beliefs then they will be say the future judges of the country and will push those ideologies in their rulings as well. Course the other argument is in Canada people have the freedom of choice to believe in what they want and that doing this is violating that right.

You know what was the scariest thing of reading this news? It wasn’t so much the whole discrimination issue but rather it just feels like the whole legal system is designed where it’s like a clique club. Essentially, it’s almost like a bunch of private corporations that have a stranglehold on the market where they get together and deem what they think is best for the industry. You would think an important issue like this should require the public’s input.

I don’t know enough about this case in general to really make an educated conclusion. But if the whole notion of this blacklist is that it protects say the general public from a questionable judge or lawyer I personally think in a way it’s a smokescreen to the real issues of preventing things like that. Case in point with my experience, about four different judges each producing extremely different results.

This is an over exaggerated and in some ways a ridiculous example, but in theory if we took say the most racist, foul mouth and sexist person in Canada and have him/her sitting as a judge shouldn’t a case be all about the facts anyways? Basically, isn’t a judge supposed to throw all that personal stuff aside and just focus on the facts? If the judge was impeccable at analyzing the facts and applying the law to it does the other stuff matter? Example, should I care if the person is straight, gay or prefers to be say a meat eater or vegetarian?
Unless you tell me flat out that is not the case as every judge has say an extreme bias in some way which is for some reason acceptable. That would sure open up a can of worms though. This whole story just makes me think how there is not enough public education and input about the whole “legal industry” as a whole to truly make it designed for the people.

Why I Don’t Think BC Legal Aid Needs More Funding

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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.

Fixing BC’s Justice System With Regular People

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I bumped into this video on Youtube where a person was simply talking about ideas on how the justice system can be changed for the better in his views in an effort to reduce things like the extraordinary delays in processing cases. For the most part, he was talking about how you shouldn’t need to be say a lawyer or a judge to help judge a case, so to speak.

He talked about this interesting example in a village where there was a mini “court” that consisted mainly of people in the community. Essentially, both sides were able to state their case and afterwards literally anyone in the community that had something to say or ask about it would. Apparently the whole process took like a day only and a resolution was met. You can see the video here:

While that may sound stupid to a lot of people, I was thinking as in many ways it’s no different than having a designated “jury” except in this scenario that “jury” is opened to everyone that is interested in the issue. I guess another debatable point that was mentioned would be is the only real way to fix the system is to allow people other than lawyers to be say the decision maker? With my limited knowledge of the current system for example, the only way a person can be a “judge” is if they have been a lawyer and are voted amongst people who are in the industry. That would make perfect sense on why it feels like the whole process was built for lawyers and judges as it essentially is.

I was even thinking before with my court case, imagine if it was as simple as both parties are in a designated room where the whole thing is live streamed for everyone in the community to judge and question. Maybe it’s just me too, but that sounds a heck of a lot cheaper even for archiving purposes rather than an individual having to pay like $800+ dollars for a “transcript.” Makes it more accessible too if say there was a publically funded site where anyone and everyone can have the ease of accessing the cases to reference.

Like now for example, there is no way an average individual is going to pay like $800 to catch up on the latest cases in town so that they can evaluate if the system is working or not per se. In my view too, that is one of the biggest reasons on why it doesn’t seem like anything gets fixed or changed as people simply don’t have the firsthand knowledge of what is really happening in those court rooms other than the sensational stories that get published in the media. Overall though, I agree with the notion that more “regular” people are needed to fix this situation.