Prince George residents have one more reason to avoid arrest - they may find themselves without a lawyer.
Access to lawyers in Prince George has been significantly reduced this week as part of a province-wide job action protesting the provincial legal aid funding.
About half the city's lawyers are refusing to provide duty counsel, Prince George lawyer Ben Levine said Thursday, to convince the provincial government to increase legal aid funding.
Duty counsel is usually provided to people who have just been arrested and do not have a lawyer. It is paid for by the provincial government.
Because those who are brought in are usually distraught and under a huge amount of stress, they can often make the wrong choices when they're not represented, said Levine.
"So it's not without some trepidation that some lawyers have decided to do this, but it's critical that we do something because access to justice is at a crisis [level] in this province," he said.
However the Legal Services Society has arranged for duty counsel for people who are in custody in 38 of 70 court locations across the province, including Prince George, representing 75 per cent of accused individuals, Attorney General Shirley Bond said.
Levine said the province had reneged on a promise to put back into legal aid programs the $200 million a year in provincial sales taxes it collects from lawyers fees and
instead cut funding significantly.
In 2002, the Liberal government slashed support by one-third to $60 million per year and, while it now stands at $68 million, the Canadian Bar Association
(CBA-BC) has calculated a further $50 million is needed to bring funding back up to previous levels once inflation is accounted for.
"There are a lot of average ordinary people out there who cannot afford a lawyer because of the cost of legal services so you're only really having access to justice for the best off among us," Levine said. "And that is no way to run a democracy."
It's the first of four stages of escalating job action.
A two-week withdrawal of services is planned for February, followed by three weeks in March and all of April.
However, B.C. Trial Lawyers Association spokesman Bentley Doyle said there may be a meeting with Bond by about the middle of this month.
Bond said the job action is primarily aimed at seeking an increase in the rate paid to lawyers who provide legal aid services. They earn between $84 and $93 an hour, depending on experience.
"Any increases to the rate that lawyers are paid for this work will come from legal aid funding and mean that fewer people will receive the support they deserve," Bond said in an email to Canadian Press.
Neil MacKenzie, with the B.C. Crown Prosecutors office, said the job action has forced some changes in the way information is handled when an accused is in custody and doesn't have legal representation.
"In general, if an accused is unrepresented the Crown does have some additional obligations," he said.
"But we frequently deal with unrepresented accused so that's not something we're unfamiliar with."
