Fifty Percent of Canadians with Civil and Administrative Legal Problems are in the Justice Gap
Ab Currie, Ph.D.Thursday, August 3, 2023
According to the World Justice Project’s (WJP) Justice Data Graphical Report I (2023), among the more than 40% of adult Canadians experiencing at least one non-trivial civil or administrative legal problem, 50% are in the justice gap. This means that 50% of the people experiencing legal problems also experienced one or more dimensions of the justice gap. Among these dimensions, 20% of Canadians did not have access to good information or advice, 52% did not have access to adequate assistance and representation, among people whose problem solving/dispute resolution process had concluded 38% thought the process was unfair, for 20% of people the resolution process took more than one year, 14% of people struggled to afford the cost, 38% of people said problems persisted after the resolution process had been completed and 57% were facing financial hardships as a consequence of the problem experience.
In half of all observed countries 50% of the people experiencing civil and administrative legal problems are in the justice gap. Canada ranks 7th among 25 EU, EFTA and North American countries.
The data used for the justice gap report are from the WJP Global Legal Needs Survey. Data was collected from 57 countries between 2017 and 2023. The Canadian data was collected in 2017 using an on-line survey of 1000 respondents in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary.