The Liberal government’s decision to expand eligibility for legal aid still fails to capture many living below the poverty line, the NDP says.

“There are so many people living below the poverty line who can’t access justice,” New Democrat MPP Jagmeet Singh, who is a lawyer, said Thursday after the government announced it has a 10-year plan to double the number of those eligible to two million Ontarians.

Currently an individual making less than $19,930 is considered to be living below the poverty line.

“If you live in a society based on the rule of law we need to ensure that people who don’t earn the same living as others can still access the court system by hiring a lawyer, whether it’s a family court matter or whether it is defending themselves from a criminal allegation,” Singh told the Star.

Here is how the income thresholds change:

<bullet> For an individual applying for a certificate, the income threshold increases from $10,800 to $11,448 in 2014, $12,135 in 2015 and $12,863 in 2016.

<bullet> For an individual applying for duty counsel, it increases from $18,000 to $19,080 in 2014, $20,225 in 2015 and $21,438 in 2016.

<bullet> For an individual applying for services through a community legal clinic, it increases from $15,800 to $16,748 in 2014, $17,753 in 2015 and $18,818 in 2016.

“If you have people living below the poverty line and they still are not qualified for legal aid then how is that in anyway ensuring the people have access to justice? It’s not,” Singh said.

Attorney General Madeleine Meilleur said as promised in the budget the government is spending $95.7 million to increase the income eligibility threshold by 6 per cent each year for the next three years, beginning Saturday. By the end of three years, an additional 385,000 will be eligible, the government estimates.

“Our legal aid system helps ensure Ontarians have access to the legal services they need, regardless of their ability to pay,” Meilleur stated, noting later it is the first increase in eligibility since 1991.

The government currently spending almost $400 million a year on legal aid services.

Meilleur said the government would like to do more but said the federal government has reduced its contribution for Ontario’s legal aid services from 50 per cent to 13 per cent.

Legal Aid Ontario chair John McCamus called it “is good news for all Ontarians.”

“This new investment will make the courts work more efficiently by reducing the number of self-represented litigants in the judicial system,” he said.

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Julie Macfarlane, a law professor at the University of Windsor, said expanding the eligibility threshold helps address the growing problem of people representing themselves, especially in family courts.

“There has in the last year to 18 months been some really sustained and concerted effort made . . . to address what is a huge crisis of affordability in legal services in Canada . . . which has resulted in the ever-increasing volumes of self-represented litigants . . . It is especially acute in our family courts where now more than half the people who appear do so without a lawyer,” she said.