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“The analysis we’re doing is looking at how we work with courts to triage some matters like family support variations or traffic ticket hearings and try to get those dealt with as quickly as we can and in a way that doesn’t add to the backlog.”

He said the system was being forced to confront questions that have been dodged for years — encouraged by a lack of government financial support for reform (no matter the party in office, Eby admitted) and a legal community unwilling to reform.

“When you put those two things together, it’s been possible for governments and various actors in the justice system to kick the ball down the road,” he said. “I’m hopeful given the tone of everybody right now — the courts, the law societies, the notaries, my office — we’re in a place where people are ready to do whatever is necessary to ensure access to justice is delivered.”

Photo by Derek Mortensen / Saskatoon Star Phoenix

Eby sketched out what he saw as three stages the legal system would go through dealing with the novel coronavirus.

“We are still in Phase 1, which is getting as many services delivered to people as possible in a triage kind of manner, dealing with things like limitation periods, the liability of service providers and making sure the courts can receive urgent applications and hear them and that the tribunals continue to operate as normally as possible.”

Conversations that had begun with the federal government and other provinces are a prelude to Phase 2 — “how do we implement some pieces that may be able to last beyond this crisis and may be able to deliver services more efficiently in ways that we hadn’t thought of before that have been enabled by this crisis?”