Table 11
Total legal aid applications by type of criminal and civil matter

The sum of approved (tables 12, 13, 14, 15) and refused (tables 17 or 18) applications does not equal the total applications count for two reasons: (i) a decision to accept or reject an application may not occur in the same time period the application is made, although the number of applications carried into the next fiscal year is comparatively small. (ii) the approved application count refers to full service applications only, whereas the total applications count is the sum of applications for full and summary service.

Effective April 20, 2009, intake services for family legal aid were expanded when eligibility screening for services formerly captured under the Domestic Legal Aid program was transferred to New Brunswick Legal Aid Services Commission from the Department of Justice and Consumer Affairs.

Ontario has 77 legal aid clinics that are independent, non-profit organizations funded by the legal aid plan. Staff lawyers and community legal workers at these clinics provide legal aid services primarily in “other” civil matters, particularly in the area of poverty law which includes, social assistance/income maintenance, landlord and tenant, workers’ compensation, criminal injuries compensation, and refugee and immigration matters. In 2011/2012, the legal aid plan received 45,941 written applications for civil certificate services. The clinic system does not record written applications in the way defined by the survey; however, that number can be inferred in that it provided 171,513 case, brief, advice and referral services of which 96% were for “other” civil legal aid.

In 2009/2010, Manitoba began to include the number of applications that were used to generate secondary or tertiary certificates in the total number of legal aid applications reported. This led to an increase in the count for total and approved legal aid applications.

In 2008/2009, all youth matters became eligible for legal aid under an agreement between the Saskatchewan Legal Aid Commission and the Ministry of Justice’s Court Services Branch. This led to an increase in the count for total and approved legal aid applications.

Application statistics were unavailable in 2010/2011, in accordance with the way defined by the survey, due to changes to the service delivery model commencing that year.

No distinction is made between summary and full service applications in Yukon. All applications are counted as full service applications. Data for Yukon include duty counsel counts.

Presumed eligibility counts are not included in the data for the Northwest Territories or Nunavut. Territorial offences are included with criminal matters.

The magnitude of the increase, between 2009/2010 and 2011/2012, in the number of civil applications, may be an artefact of a new information tracking system introduced by the Legal Services Board of the Northwest Territories beginning 2010/2011.

In 2009/2010, the capacity for statistical reporting in Nunavut was limited due to issues with information tracking systems. As a result, the number of applications may be underreported and is not comparable to previous years.