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18 August 2015 / Roger Smith
Categories: Opinion
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A change of scene

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Roger Smith provides some home thoughts from abroad

Nova Scotia is about the size of Wales with less than a third of the population. On the last evening of my visit to its capital, Halifax, the Queen Mary 2 took a twirl in its deep water harbour at sunset. The ship dominated the city—providing a good image of the relative size of Nova Scotia as compared with the UK. So, you might think that the Home Countries could learn little from a sleepy eastern Canadian province on the edge of the Atlantic. You would, however, be wrong. It turns out that Nova Scotia has a number of lessons for us—at least in legal aid.

Organisation

Two Province-wide organisations dominate legal assistance in Nova Scotia. One is the Nova Scotia Legal Aid Commission (styling itself as Legal Aid Nova Scotia), the equivalent of our onetime Legal Services Commission. The other, smaller provider, is the Legal Information Society of Nova Scotia (LISNS). This is oriented towards public information. The province has an American-style prohibition on the “unauthorised

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