Restore Funding for Legal Aid!

Since the Liberal government took power in 2001, British Columbians have suffered deep cuts to legal aid services. In November, 2005, Attorney General Wally Oppal told Nanaimo MLA Leonard Krog that legal aid is accessible through a number of Nanaimo community organizations, including the Nanaimo Women’s Centre. This is the response that Board president Jeannie Martin recently sent to the Attorney General.

Dear Minister:

Re: Estimates: Ministry of Attorney General and Minister Responsible for Multiculturalism

I am writing on behalf of the Nanaimo Women’s Resources Society, which operates the Nanaimo Women’s Centre. On November 2, 2005, you appeared before the Legislative Assembly’s Committee of Supply to answer questions regarding the budget estimates for your ministry. In response to questions regarding the provision of legal aid in our community, you listed the Nanaimo Women’s Resources Society as one of the organizations that has replaced the services provided by the Legal Services Society prior to the 2002 budget cuts.

The Nanaimo Women’s Resources Society advocates for the political, social and economic equality of women, and if women need help navigating the legal system, we do try to find them the answers they need. That said, we have not been able to obtain project funding for our proposed Women’s Legal Services program, and even if we did have the funding for this program, it would not come close to replacing the assistance once offered to residents of this community.

As noted in the Social Planning and Research Council of British Columbia’s recent study of poverty law in British Columbia, provincial government cuts to legal aid services mean that poverty law assistance in B.C. is now “scarce, fragmented and dramatically underfunded.” This is particularly true in Nanaimo, where our community and poverty law centre has had to close.

It is frustrating to read that you believe the Nanaimo Women’s Resources Society has managed to mend the social safety net that your government unravelled in 2002. Our Society is run by a volunteer Board of Directors. Most of our Directors already work full-time within the community, or are volunteering on top of a schedule that also includes full-time studies and part-time work. When the provincial government cut our core funding, we were forced to eliminate the position of executive director, so the Board of Directors has taken on her duties.

We employ a part-time program coordinator who is the front-line support for women in need, and a part-time centre coordinator who focuses on administration. We are open just 15 hours per week (Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays) and we see an average of 400 women per month. During this time our staff and volunteers offer one-on-one support, group counselling sessions, a free clothing exchange, computer and telephone access and assistance with accessing a variety of community services. We supply women in need with everything from food to bus tickets to toiletries to telephone access. Obviously, we are not also able to offer comprehensive and wide-reaching legal assistance to our community during this time.

As our MLA Leonard Krog advised you on November 2, a recent study by the West Coast Legal Education Action Fund showed that poverty law services and family legal aid are accessed primarily by women. At the Nanaimo Women’s Resources Society, we definitely feel the devastating impact of the cuts to these services.

Nanaimo has one of the highest rates of single-women parenthood and child poverty in British Columbia. Nanaimo female single-parent families earn $4500 less per year than the B.C. average. Compared with other communities in B.C., Nanaimo has the second highest provincial rate of dependent elderly women. Between 1997 and 2002, the Nanaimo area saw a 130 per cent increase in family violence. Please understand that these are not mere statistics. These are the people who regularly walk through our doors and seek help from our front-line staff.

The Nanaimo Women’s Centre fills an important need in our community. If it did not, our staff, Board members, volunteers and donors would not have struggled for so long to keep its doors open. Prior to the cuts to core funding, we ran the Nanaimo Women’s Centre on $80,000 per year. The one-two-punch of losing core funding and becoming ineligible for direct access funds left us with $20,000 (mostly from memberships, donations and small local grants) to cover wages, rent, utilities and other expenses. We are working on fundraising projects every spare second so that we can continue to operate.

As mentioned, we have so far been unsuccessful in obtaining project funding for our proposed Women’s Legal Services program. We are by no means replacing legal aid in this community. We are helping women on a case by case basis, and it is not easy. It is imperative to restore meaningful access to poverty law services in our community, and throughout British Columbia. Members of our Board would be pleased to meet with you to discuss this situation further.

Yours truly,
Jeannie Martin, President
Nanaimo Women’s Resources Society