Nunavik’s only staffed legal aid office faces temporary closure
Office set to close March 18 until a replacement is found, CCJAT says
On Friday, Dec. 4, a 12-member jury found Randy Koneak guilty of the first-degree murder of Chloé Labrie, following a two-week trial in Kuujjuaq. (File photo)
Nunavik’s only permanently staffed legal aid office will close next month while it searches someone to replace an outgoing lawyer.
The lawyer currently working from Kuujjuaq’s legal office, Valérie Bergeron-Boutin, is leaving her position March 15 and the Centre Communautaire Juridique Abitibi-Témiscaminque—the legal aid network that serves Nunavik—has yet to find a replacement.
“Her departure and circumstances beyond our control oblige us to temporarily close the Kuujjuaq legal aid office effective March 18,” the CCJAT said in a news release last week.
In the meantime, clients from Kuujjuaq or elsewhere in Nunavik will have to correspond with the legal aid office in Val d’Or at (819) 874-3203.
There will be a lawyer based there assigned specifically to Kuujjuaq and Nunavik, the office said.
But Nunavimmiut will have access to the same services during the closure, said Nathalie Samson, the centre’s director general.
“We will always have a lawyer who will oversee civil cases, like youth protection, family and administrative law, and a lawyer for the criminal law,” she said.
“Detained citizens will continue to have access to a lawyer as they did before by telephone or videoconference.”
Nunavik’s other communities are largely served by legal aid lawyers who are based in southern Quebec, but travel to Nunavik as part of the circuit court.
The legal aid office closure comes on the heels of news that Nunavik’s only resident Crown prosecutor is no longer based in Kuujjuaq, another move described as “temporary.”
A spokesperson for Quebec’s office of criminal and penal prosecutions told Nunatsiaq News in December that the office did not remove the prosecutor’s position, but rather increased the number of prosecutors serving the region from two to three—though they are all now based outside Nunavik.
The mobile nature of Nunavik’s justice system has been flagged as problematic in a handful of recent reports, including one by Quebec’s bar association and its ombudsman’s office, which have said that Nunavik needs more local and permanent staff.
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