In an April 25 speech to over one hundred pro bono volunteers and supporters at Access Pro Bono's 8th Annual Appreciation Breakfast in Vancouver, British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Mark McEwan lamented the increasing intrusion of the executive branch of government-- and its preoccupation with a self-sufficient user-pay justice system-- into the administration of justice through the courts.

McEwan commented on two troubling trends in parliamentary democracies:

"The first is a trend in this and other jurisdictions for power to accrete to the executive branch of government because it controls the expenditure of money, and an attitude, perhaps derived from business models, that control of the money invariably implies control of everything else. This is not true with respect to the obligation to finance the basic mechanics of government which includes the courts, but it seems hard to put this across. As well, the restraint proper to each branch of government in dealing with the others, embodied in conventions, sometimes appear to have been forgotten."

McEwan also critiqued the trend toward diverting people away from the courts and into other dispute resolution forums in the name of cost-efficiency and the pursuit of individual interests over individual rights.

At the end of his speech, McEwan provided a reading list of five books on the rule of law and the state of common law justice systems.

Read Justice McEwan's full speech here.