Section 1: Introduction

In March 2020, the Department of Justice Canada (JUS) reached out to Proactive Information Services Inc. to gauge our interest in undertaking a community-based research project. The intent of the project was to identify what serious legal problems Métis individuals in Canada are encountering, what their legal needs are, how those needs are or are not addressed, as well as the health and economic impacts of these legal problems.

Since the early 2000s, legal needs surveys of the general population have been undertaken in Canada and in at least 15 other countries around the world, including the US, the UK, Australia, and a number of developing countries (OECD 2019). The Canadian survey was first championed by JUS over three cycles in 2004, 2006 and 2008 with multiple reports prepared. More recently, the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice ran a cycle of the survey in 2014, with questions added regarding the cost of resolving problems.

This report is intended to supplement the 2021 Canadian Legal Problems Survey (CLPS) that was developed and implemented by Statistics Canada on behalf of JUS and several other federal departments. The final sample for the CLPS was 21,170 people living in the ten provinces with an oversample of Indigenous people. To complement the CLPS, community-based researchers were contracted to conduct a series of qualitative studies to explore and report on the experiences of specific populations in different parts of Canada who have experienced a serious legal problem. This study fills an important gap in understanding the serious legal problems faced by Métis people in the NWT.

Originally, approximately 20 Métis individuals living in the NWT, who had encountered serious legal problems in the past three years, were to be interviewed and the work was to address:

  1. What types of problems have the participants experienced in the last three years? If there has been more than one problem, are they interrelated?
  2. How have the participants tried to resolve their problems? What have been the outcomes of these efforts?
  3. Have the participants resolved their problems through recourse to the formal legal system? If not, why not?
  4. What has been the impact of these problems on the participants – for example, financially, mentally and physically?

As stated earlier, there was a desire for this to be a community-based project. However, shortly after Proactive started the project, the global COVID-19 pandemic began to have a major impact on Canadian communities. As a result, travel restrictions and community lock-downs resulted in changes to the original plan. Travel to communities was no longer possible. Therefore, the original approach was revised to include ten instead of 20 interviews with Métis individuals who had experienced serious legal issues in the past three years. In addition, five service providers were interviewed to provide insights about the clients they serve. They were asked about:

  1. The types of serious legal issues individuals encounter,
  2. How individuals try to resolve their issues,
  3. Barriers preventing individuals from resolving their issues,
  4. How having to deal with these issues affected these individuals, and
  5. Challenges that service providers face when helping individuals to deal with their issues.

Interviews with individuals were undertaken in-person and virtually. All interviews with service providers were undertaken virtually. The process and approaches will be described in greater detail in the methodology section.