There’s no question that few people are truly concerned for the welfare of legal aid defence lawyers like me and the $304 bail hearing fee I now stand to lose. But it’s not my lost money I’m talking about here. It’s yours.

This recent legal aid cut to the criminal defence bar will cost more than it could ever save, in terms of money and in terms of the values we tell ourselves we hold dear. Your tax dollars, those not already earmarked to paying massive legal fees for litigation and fines over beer, wind power, and breach of contract, will now go to pay for huge backlogs in the court system.

In a courtroom, there is generally just one person — the defence lawyer — who wants to ensure the fight is fair. One person to level a very stacked playing field and who is routinely chastised and vilified for such audacity. In this age of hashtag activism, where every aggrieved individual turns to social media to voice outrage and highlight their victimization, a professional defender of unproven allegations is seen as merely the facilitator of evil, an unnecessary imposition on the public purse.

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My tweets about these legal aid cuts were immediately rebuked by Attorney General Caroline Mulroney and her team, who argued that there is already a public defender in every courthouse, leaving no need for taxpayers to pay for a lawyer of choice for each accused. As a lawyer, she should know that people who don’t get bail end up pleading guilty at a massively higher rate, even when they are not guilty. It is their only way out.

A single duty counsel has never been enough to handle the volume of bail hearings for those without lawyers. One person simply cannot deal with 30 or more cases a day. It results in thousands more people being incarcerated as they wait out a bottleneck, all at taxpayer expense, without making communities any safer.

It’s ironic that a party that broadcasts its goals to end overcrowded hospitals and hallway medicine is willing to magnify that same chaos and financial waste when it comes to people facing a judge instead of a doctor. It smacks of the wealthy elitism that the PC’s campaigned against. If you’re in jail, and you’re poor, it’s your fault.

Some might think I am being soft on crime and that I want to put rapists and murderers back out on the streets. Nope. I have already gone on record to say that in regard to violent crimes against women and children, those who have been found guilty still get off too easy.

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Being a public defender does not make any lawyer a lefty by default. I believe in fiscal responsibility. I believe that some of the cuts to legal aid make some sense, even though they will hurt my income significantly. It is the bail cut I am focused on.

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Criminal legal aid lawyers (a type of funding that most criminal lawyers must accept as part of their practice), see first-hand a system collapsing under its own weight. One would think an experienced and judicious government would guard against that — not pander to it. And it is interesting after all that this government is only cutting funds to the defence side of the justice system and not the prosecution, judicial or police budget.

So, I Invite the attorney general to prove me wrong. She’s got the next five months off after all. I invite her to spend one day shadowing any duty counsel in a GTA courthouse, to observe how this person struggles to balance case after case. Maybe she could show me studies of how the public defender system has worked in the State of New York, where she, our attorney general, was called to the bar.

In short, it doesn’t work. The gap between the kind of representation that poor and rich people obtain is stark and unacceptable.

Please, Ms. Mulroney, and Mr. Ford, show us evidence of your fiscal wisdom. Show us just how this will work “for the people.” Not with talking points on your own private news channel, but with facts. It’s our money, not yours, that you are locking away.