As unveiled on April 16, 2024, by Chrystia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Budget 2024 proposes $72 million for immigration legal aid in 2024-25, up from $43.5 million per year in Budgets 2023 and 2022.
The federal government’s proposed transfers to the provinces and territories for immigration, criminal and other legal aid are included in the Budget Implementation Act, 2024, No. 1 (Bill C-69) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2025, which was introduced in the House of Commons May 2, 2024. Second reading debate on Bill C-69 kicked off on May 6.
Over the next five years, including this fiscal year, Budget 2024 proposes to provide a total of $273.7 million for immigration legal aid (mostly used by refugee claimants), including $72 million in 2025-26; and $43.5 million “ongoing” in each of fiscal 2026-27, 2027-28 and 2028-29, the federal government said.
The funding responds, at least in part, to years of sustained lobbying of the Liberal Cabinet by the Canadian Bar Association (CBA), which has long called for “stable, sustainable funding for public legal aid systems,” particularly since a “crisis point” was reached in Ontario, when the provincial government announced it would discontinue funding for new immigration and refugee cases as of April 2019. Legal Aid Ontario, therefore, had to announce it was suspending those immigration services; however, the federal government stepped in August 2019 with $25.7 million to cover Legal Aid Ontario’s shortfall and maintain legal aid for new immigration and refugee cases for 2019-20. It brought total federal funding for immigration and refugee legal aid in Ontario to $40.9 million for 2019-20
Gabriela Ramo, EY Law
Ramo told Law360 Canada there has not been the same general understanding of the importance of legal aid to ensuring fairness and access to justice in the immigration area as there has been in the criminal law area, notwithstanding the “draconian” consequences migrant claimants may experience, such as being sent back to countries riven by violence and conflict.
“I think there’s a lack of understanding as to what the severe consequences are for someone who isn’t able to pay or obtain representation or get a legal aid certificate for, for instance, a refugee case,” she said.
Ramo noted the Federal Court is “swamped with immigration cases, and the IRB can’t keep up, and the numbers of people making refugee claims at our borders continue to go up.”
“So, in that context, the fact that we are getting funding for legal aid for refugees and immigration, that to us is a win,” Ramo said. “Is it enough? Would we like more? Of course.”
Robert Israel Blanshay, Blanshay Law
“The Immigration and Refugee Board is having a collective nervous breakdown over how they’re going to process this, without creating a hideous backlog, which they are going to have,” he remarked. “So the system needs an influx of way more than $72 million for 2025 and 2026 ... it should probably be $272 million.”
“In the short term, yes, it’s good,” Blanshay said of the federal contribution proposed in Budget 2024. “In the long term, does it really address all the needs of persons who require ... legal aid dealing with immigration and refugee matters?” he asked. “No. I don’t think it does.”
Blanshay also questioned why the federal government is proposing to reduce its contribution to $43.5 million “ongoing” in each of the subsequent three fiscal years — an amount he said would be far too low. “Nobody knows what [ongoing] means,” he remarked. “‘How long, etc.?”
“Overall I suppose I would say we’re headed in the right direction,” Blanshay said.
However, he suggested federal officials “need to be just a little bit more realistic about the actual numbers of persons that are streaming into the country that are going to need legal aid in Ontario or ... Alberta or Quebec, and need to ensure that the legal aid systems in each jurisdiction remain robust financially.”
“This is an access to justice issue,” he stressed. “This is what this government [and Arif Virani], the justice minister, talks about every day, ... access to justice. Well, if you want access to justice, you shouldn’t divide people with millions of dollars, that can afford a lawyer, versus people that don't have anything, that cannot. Everybody [should] get access to justice.”
According to a report from the office of Ontario’s auditor general following a 2018 audit, Legal Aid Ontario had been using a growing portion of its provincial funding to address the “significant” increase in refugee and immigration cases. Provincial funding allocated by Legal Aid Ontario for such cases increased to $24.9 million in 2017-18, up by almost 30 per cent from $19.3 million in 2014-15. Ontario’s federal funding portion was only 37 per cent in 2016-17 and 39 per cent in 2017-18, whereas in 2016-17 in B.C. the federal portion was 72 per cent of total funding, Manitoba’s was 90 per cent, and Quebec’s was 69 per cent.
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