To provide us with accurate data to inform our various efforts to improve legal aid, we have asked legal aid lawyers to assist by completing the Legal Aid Survey of Lawyers after approaching organizations representing the judiciary to help us gain the insight and expertise of judges into what is working and what is not under the various legal aid plans. The information collected will be added to the Advocacy Resource Kit above, in the form of fact sheets for easy accessibility. This issue has been front and centre in meetings with government representatives and media contacts over the past few years. There has generally been a very supportive response to the CBA's message. We are in turn assisting government officials with information, ammunition and arguments from our members to bolster the case for assigning greater priority to legal aid.
Similar efforts are ongoing within each of our Branches.
Until things improve, we'll keep the pressure on government officials and politicians, demanding that they do something to resolve the legal aid crisis. Simply put, the CBA believes that governments must ensure that legal aid is available for low income Canadians to be able to actually exercise their most fundamental legal rights. In addition to seeking improvements to the law and the administration of justice, as an association representing the legal profession, the CBA also maintains that the dedicated lawyers working on legal aid files must be treated fairly by legal aid plans. The CBA argues for an increased government commitment to legal aid, both in terms of resources and to ensure more uniformity across the country through national minimum standards and eligibility criteria. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the CBA was involved in several important projects pertaining to legal aid in Canada.