Law360 Canada (August 27, 2026, 1:18 PM EDT) -- The inability to afford a lawyer remains the biggest barrier to legal services in Manitoba, but obstacles also arise when various bodies operate in silos rather than coming together to serve the “whole person,” an official says following the release of a survey on access to justice in the province.

Earlier this month, the Law Society of Manitoba (LSM) released its “What We Heard from Community Report” as part of its ongoing Access to Justice (A2J) Initiative.

The report is the result of a 15-month consultation with key groups in the province, states a news release.

“What we learned is clear: advancing access to justice is not limited by a lack of ideas, commitment or investment, but by how we collaborate to navigate system-wide change,” it states.

The report will inform the LSM on the establishment of the Access to Justice Action Coalition — an initiative aimed at advancing “the community’s vision through co-design” and ensuring “leadership, collaboration and accountability across the ecosystem.”

LSM chief executive officer Leah Kosokowsky told Law360 Canada that while the cost of legal services remains “the number one barrier” to justice in the province, another contributor is the fact that legal service providers “have all become so siloed in what we’re doing.”

“The environment here — like many places in Canada — is we have a whole host of organizations and individuals who are trying to improve access to justice, who are providing services to Manitobans, but each one of those organizations … has a specific mandate,” said Kosokowsky. “So, we’re each sort of taking a small bite out of the big elephant, if I could use that analogy. And so we’re kind of working in silos. Everybody stays in their lane.”

Kosokowsky elaborated further: “Everybody has ideas about how we might better work together, but no one organization has the mandate to look at the overall landscape that we have here to see how, in fact, we can pull together our resources, our expertise and our ability to deliver services to the whole person — not just this one particular service. And so … those who are using these services, they’re bounced around.”

A potential solution, she said, would be “the ability to marshal the resources that are out there [and to] capitalize on that and to work together.”

As for the report, it talks of the LSM’s A2J Initiative and its numerous goals, such as the transformation of “how people access and experience justice by fostering safe, compassionate, fair, equitable, timely and affordable justice.”

In terms of feedback, respondents felt there is a “lack of shared infrastructure” and a need to “act collectively.” Currently, improving access to justice is “slow, fragmented, and unsustainable,” they said.

As for challenges, the report talks of there being “more providers, delivering more services to a greater number of people.”

“Yet, gaps remain,” it states.

Structural challenges continue to be “key barriers,” as well as limited funding, a lack of coordination across sectors and “systemic resistance to change.”

There are also issues with data collection and making that data publicly available.

“As a result, we cannot fully understand peoples’ journeys from problem through to resolution. We struggle to measure the impact of our actions,” states the report.

As for what would potentially lead to the most improvement in accessing justice, 79 per cent pointed to long-term funding. Along those same lines, 71 per cent cited improved collaboration, and 42 per cent cited “shared data infrastructure and evaluation.”

Respondents also reported concerns with trust and transparency when it comes to the courts and legal processes.

“People navigating traditional western court and legal systems often do not feel confident that they are being given clear, honest or complete information,” states the report. “Opaque, technical language and complex procedures leave most people feeling confused, fearful, alienated and powerless — particularly those without support.”

Given Manitoba’s large Indigenous population — and the fact they continue to be grossly overrepresented in the criminal and family justice systems — the report naturally sought input from Indigenous stakeholders.

“As you can imagine, many of the frontline organizations have Indigenous leaders in them — even if they’re not an Indigenous organization — and so we did it that way, of course,” said Kosokowsky. “But also, the Southern Chiefs’ Organization, the MKO [Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak], for example. We reached out to leadership in all those organizations. And in fact, the Southern Chiefs are going to be part of the action coalition.”

Manitoba has one of the largest proportions of Indigenous residents in Canada. According to Statistics Canada, Indigenous people made up 18.1 per cent of the province’s population in 2021 — the largest proportion of all the country’s provinces. (This does not include the territories, which have the highest numbers of Indigenous residents.)

Kosokowsky said that while the A2J initiative is “province-wide,” it was essential to hear what Indigenous leaders and other stakeholders had to say.

“Our Indigenous community has to be a partner in this.”

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