NEWS
4 Obiter Dicta
Embarking on the Road to Change
New Initiatives Follow Action Committee Recommendations
hannah de jong & sabreena delhon ›
canadian forum on civil justice
I
n october 2013, the Action Committee on
Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters*
released its final report, A Roadmap For Change.
The report outlined detailed recommendations,
and called on diverse justice system stakeholders to
improve access to justice in Canada. The “nine-point
roadmap” advocated for increasing funding for legal
aid, strengthening the Early Resolution Services
Sector, making access to justice a central part of professionalism, and transforming courts into multiservice centres for public dispute resolution.
Last January, the Action Committee held a
Colloquium of over 100 leaders in the civil and family
justice field to address the key recommendations presented in the final report. Colloquium participants
attended workshops, and drawing from various disciplines and jurisdictions, shared innovative solutions to common access to justice roadblocks. These
discussions were captured in the Colloquium Report.
Released in June, this crucial follow-up to the final
report functions as a guide and idea bank for service providers and other stakeholders to implement
Action Committee recommendations.
So where are we now, exactly one year after the
release of A Roadmap For Change? What initiatives
are underway across the country in response to
the Action Committee’s recommendations? We are
pleased to report that since the release of the Action
Committee reports several ministries and other
justice organizations have multi-stakeholder collaborative initiatives underway or in-progress. These
initiatives bring key recommendations from the
Action Committee to life – particularly with regard to
creating “local and national access to justice implementation mechanisms.”
Selected activities from across the country are
presented below, and we look forward to bringing
you updates as this work evolves. Several of these
initiatives were profiled in the July 2014 issue of the
Canadian Forum on Civil Justice newsletter.
Alberta
Joint Action Forum: The Joint Action F