Legal Aid in Canada 2023-24 (English, HTML)

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Publisher-reported update

2025-09-10

This year’s report includes data from the 2023-24 fiscal year, as well as trend data from the past five years. Between 2021 and 2023, the Government of Canada provided additional funding resources for criminal and immigration and refugee legal aid services, as part of a broader effort to promote equity and fairness within the justice system, and to address the overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples, Black and other racialized groups in the criminal justice system. In addition, Justice Canada introduced a new initiative in 2021-22, Impact of Race and Culture Assessments (IRCAs). IRCAs help sentencing judges understand how experiences such as poverty, marginalization, racism, and social exclusion of Black and racialized offenders impact an offenders’ interaction with the justice system. This year’s annual report includes data showing the use of IRCAs over the first three years of funding. In 2023-24 the justice system continued to experience the pressures of sustained backlogs and longer case processing times in the courts, which were exacerbated by the COVID 19 pandemic. In the legal aid context, data from 2023-24 show that the legal aid system has returned to or surpassed…

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