Straddling the Past and the Future: Traditional Art, Contemporary Artists, and Pan-African Cultural Policy

This presentation is an initial exploration into the question of how pan-African cultural policies, which have adopted international discourses of heritage protection and cultural diversity, have been implemented in ways that have led to the commodification of "traditional" African art forms. In particular, Nicole is concerned with how a post-colonial emphasis on "heritage" in the newly developing field of cultural policy in Africa generally, and South-Africa in particular, has resulted in a tension between contemporary artists who wish to become participants in the growing global creative industries, and policy strategies that continue to equate "African art" with the informal sector of "traditional" cultural expression. Despite the fact that contemporary artists continue to express African identities and values through their artwork, policy support for integrating these artists into the global arts industry has remained elusive. Nicole explores some of the recent policy critiques being made by local artists and activists and then examine some of the civil society initiatives that are developing as activists attempt draw attention to the specific cultural and economic needs of local artists whether they are "traditional" or not.   Nicole Aylwin is a PhD Candidate in Communication and Culture at York University and Academic Coordinator for the York Centre for Public Policy and Law. Nicole is an IPinCH Associate

Rural and Remote Access to Justice, A Literature Review

All Canadians, regardless of financial or other barriers, should have reasonable access to justice. Yet the reality remains that for the nearly 20% of Canadians living in rural and remote communities, accessing justice remains difficult, largely due to the unique challenges to service provision that exist in rural and remote communities. These challenges are rooted in the geographical, demographic, and social and cultural characteristics that define rurality and remoteness, and in the varied combinations of these elements that determine the legal and social service needs of individual communities. Moreover, rural and remote areas have various infrastructure, resource, communication and social barriers that impede and/or complicate service delivery. This literature review provides an overview of these challenges and explores developments aimed at improving access to services for rural and remote populations

Selected Annotated Bibliography of National and Regional Legal Needs Survey

Since the mid-1990’s there have been at least twenty-six large-scale national surveys on the public’s experience of justiciable events conducted within sixteen separate jurisdictions. Twenty-four of these surveys have utilized the methodological framework of Hazel Genn’s Paths to Justice (1999). Genn’s approach seeks to examine legal needs beyond what may be identified by respondents as a legal need. This approach emerged due to critiques of previous legal needs research that only sought to identify persons who were likely to use legal services rather than the types of problems that are taken to lawyers. Genn’s approach does not rely upon respondent’s legal knowledge to identify the presence of legal problems. Instead, Genn’s study measures ‘justiciable events’ where a justiciable event is “a matter… which raised legal issues, whether or not it was recognized by the respondent as being ‘legal’ and whether or not any action taken … involved … the civil justice system.” The focus is on the behavior of the public in dealing with non-trivial justiciable problems and disputes as potential plaintiffs or potential defendants

Innovation and Access to Justice: Addressing the Challenge of a Diverse Justice Ecosystem

Despite having been a mainstay topic of conversation for many years in the fields of business, technology, public administration and other specialized service sectors such as medicine, ‘innovation’ has only recently begun to infuse conversations in the justice sector. With the widespread recognition that globalization is disrupting traditional legal roles and organizational structures, that technology is poised to radically reconfigure how legal services are delivered, and that despite best efforts, the access to justice gap continues to grow in Canada, innovation – as both a noun and a verb - has become a talisman, poised to help address the challenges pushing at the door of the legal profession. While conversations about disruptive innovation in law seem to flow more easily when discussing legal technology or the changing nature of “big law”, the discussions around innovation have been more hesitant in dialogues on access to justice. This hesitation may be due in part to an unfortunate history of the term being equated with doing more work with less money – a situation that has often been foisted upon already stretched publically funded legal service providers (like, for example, community legal clinics, or other not-for-profit legal information sources). However, recently, a more nuanced and crossdisciplinary conversation about innovation has emerged. Legal practitioners, academics and access to justice advocates have begun to explore how the theories, methods and tools of innovation in adjacent sectors can be applied to meet the complex access to justice challenges presenting in Canada. This special edition, focused exclusively on exploring innovation through an access to justice lens, is an exciting opportunity to join a burgeoning scholarship on the topic of innovation and access to justice

“A different day in court”: Exploring the place of judicial mediation in Ontario’s alternative dispute resolution landscape

In January 2011, the Ontario Bar Association established a taskforce to explore the question of how judicial dispute resolution could improve access to justice in Ontario. In their recently released final report, the taskforce offers some compelling conclusions. In particular, the report recommends that JDR be formally recognised as part of the alternative dispute resolution options available in Ontario since it would provide litigants the opportunity to receive their “day in court” without the necessity of a costly trial.This article elaborates on the findings of the report and places them within the larger context of current research and Canadian policy developments in access to justice

Status Report: Working Data Document

In 2013, the Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters ( Action Committee ) published the Access to Civil and Family Justice: A Roadmap for Change report which contains 9 justice development goals that offer a guide for addressing Canada\u27s access to justice challenges. In late 2016 to early 2017, the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice (in support of the Action Committee) conducted the first ever national access to justice development goal survey ( Survey ) in order to measure progress, and to identify gaps, challenges and success in the access to justice work that is being done in Canada

The Cost of Experiencing Everyday Legal Problems Related to Loss of Employment and Loss of Housing

In 2014, the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice (CFCJ) conducted a national survey to determine the costs, extent and consequences of serious civil and family justice problems experienced by the Canadian public. Findings from the CFCJ’s national “Everyday Legal Problems and the Cost of Justice in Canada” survey (Cost of Justice survey) confirm that civil and family legal problems result in significant monetary costs to the individuals who experience them as well as to the publicly funded services that individuals access for support when dealing with legal problems. With Canadians spending almost as much to resolve their legal problems as they do on food for a year, it is hardly surprising that for many people, the financial burdens associated with experiencing a serious civil or family justice problem cause or contribute to other legal, social, family, health and personal problems . A significant number of Canadians also report losing their job and/or their housing as a direct consequence of one or more legal problems

Design and Conduct of the Cost of Justice Survey

The “Everyday Legal Problems and the Cost of Justice in Canada” survey (“CoJ survey”) 1 is a national everyday legal problems survey carried out as part of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice’s Cost of Justice project (CFCJ). 2 The CoJ survey was conducted by the Institute for Social Research (ISR), York University, on behalf of the CFCJ, between September 2013 and May 2014. The 3,051 main study interviews were completed with randomly selected adults from randomly selected households over land line telephones. An additional set of 212 cell phone interviews were also conducted (discussed further below). The interviews averaged just over 21 minutes in length and the response rate was 42%. This technical report briefly outlines the design and conduct of the survey