M.M. de Weerdt Law Library to close
Yellowknife to become the only territorial or provincial capital without the resource
Jessica Davey-Quantick
Northern News Services
Friday, July 1, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Video may have killed the radio star but it's the Internet that's killed the M.M. De Weerdt Law Library, according to the Department of Justice.
The M.M. de Weerdt Law Library's hours said it should have been open on Tuesday when Yellowknifer attempted to visit. The doors were locked. - Jessica Davey-Quantick/NNSL photo |
Cost and lack of attendance were sited as the reasons for the closure, which will make Yellowknife the only provincial or territorial capital without a public law library.
"Many people prefer online resources instead of visiting a bricks-and-mortar library. The use of the library resources has been consistently dwindling over the years while at the same time, the costs of publications have been rapidly increasing," stated Justice Minister Louis Sebert in an e-mail to Yellowknifer.
"Going forward, it doesn't make sense to continue to support a resource that is barely used, when we can better use the money in other areas."
Prior to the announcement of the closure, there was no consultation with either the law society or the Northwest Territories Law Foundation, and many members of the legal community don't agree with the assertions Sebert is making. "It's a decision that was made by cabinet and the minister of justice to close the facility basically to save money," said Frame Lake MLA Kevin O'Reilly.
According to Sebert, the law library has been operating over budget consistently - the amount for its operations in the 2015-16 budget was $223,000, but actual expenditures were nearly double that. Approximately $100,000 went to the salary to maintain the librarian, while the remaining $367,000 was spent on material, supplies and subscriptions to keep it up-to-date.
"This is too great an expense to justify in light of the declining use of the facility," stated Sebert.
Whether there actually is a declining use of the facility is up for debate however.
According to Sandra MacKenzie, a lawyer at Lawson Lundell LLP, attendance was tracked by a sign-in sheet that many visitors to the library neglected to sign. Also, she said, many members of the public may not have even have known it was there.
"There's absolutely no signage," she said.
She and many other members of the legal profession have key fobs to give them access outside office hours.
However, last Monday when she attempted to visit during business hours, the door was already locked.
"It's a real access to justice issue because the legal system is complicated and it's hard to understand," said MacKenzie.
"The librarian there could point out ... which books would be useful as a starting point, which websites to go to, which legal resources are available at the library that are not free, that are not available form your home computer."
She also stressed that the library is an important resource for lawyers, because the Law Society of the Northwest Territories doesn't have anything like it.
"So if the library is closed, the next year a student comes up to Yellowknife to do their articles, there's not going to be a place for them to study, for them to access books on the Northwest Territories, legislation or cases, that's not going to exist," she said. O'Reilly agreed, saying this could end up being detrimental to recruiting lawyers to the area.
He also named sole practitioners and lawyers without access to the resources of large firms as two groups who benefited heavily from the library.
"If the lawyers don't have access to those sorts of resources I think it's going to create problems down through the system," he said.
"(This could) perhaps result in delays and resources that have to be spent in other ways. So I'm not convinced that there's a big savings that are really going to be garnered."
Sebert disagreed. He pointed to online legal databases as a reasonable substitute and said popular volumes could be transferred from the library to another space for people to use.
"Of course, there will still be access to the interlibrary loan program which operates with the co-operation of law libraries in Alberta," he added.
In an open letter to Sebert, which was tabled in legislative assembly by O'Reilly on June 23, Austin Marshall of Marshall Company Barristers & Solicitors stated resources found on the Internet cannot replace what the law library does.
"Access to justice is not a numbers game," he wrote. "The Minister's statement that the law is available online is an overstatement of what is actually available. If the library closes, a nerve centre of legal knowledge to our legal community will be irretrievably lost."
Sebert told Yellowknifer his department makes access to justice a priority, adding the outreach clinic run by the Legal Aid Commission will be expanded and there are plans in the works to establish a public access research centre in the courthouse.
"(It) will offer free online access to legal research resources and a number of particularly useful hard copy materials," stated Sebert.
