This report summarized discussions at a research colloquium hosted by the University of Victoria Access to Justice Centre for Excellence (UVicACE) in May 2016. The goal of the colloquium, which brought together 23 participants from a range of organizations, was to talk about developing a province-wide research framework to collect empirical data on access to justice in British Columbia.
Participants agreed that more coordination, more collaboration, and agreed-upon research goals would be needed to support data collection. There was also discussion about whether this should be a Canada-wide initiative, but participants decided against this because of limited resources and potential problems of coordinating across different jurisdictions.
As a result of the colloquium, UVic ACE said that it would take the following steps toward designing and implementing a justice research framework, subject to securing funding:
- set up a province-wide, multi-sector working group
- support the working group by conducting research, providing outreach and information, and hosting more colloquia
- prepare a report recommending guding principles about justice research in BC
- conduct a literature review on justice research frameworks and an inventory of existing Canadian access to justice research
- promote justice research projects among University of Victoria faculty and students