News and Views Issue 2: Fall 1999
At the Forum
Every day at the Forum is filled with exciting challenges, not simply because
we are often doing things for the first time as an organization, but because we
are part of the growing movement which is taking place across this country to
improve the civil justice system. As you will see on the pages which follow, the
Forum is undertaking both research and projects which will add to the growing
body of reform efforts underway throughout Canada. We are also developing ways
to collect information about the numerous and varied reform initiatives that are
taking place, so that we can, in turn, share these resources and enable everyone
to benefit and learn from experiences in other jurisdictions.
We have the vehicles to deliver this information to you. Our newsletter will be
published twice yearly and will highlight some of the current research and initiatives
that you share with us, as well as provide a forum for scholarly reviews. Our
website (http://www.cfcj-fcjc.org) is home
to our "civil justice clearinghouse": an electronic collection designed to allow
you access to the growing body of work on civil justice reform. The site includes
links to other relevant websites, a searchable bibliographic database of published
civil justice materials and, with your help, will soon house a collection of unpublished
materials on our full-text database.
The Forum has begun a "Civil Justice Clearinghouse Project" designed to develop
this collection. We will begin by establishing contacts with those organizations
and individuals responsible for writing or collecting the unpublished materials:
the bar (through The Canadian Bar Association, Law Societies and civil trial lawyers
associations), the judiciary, rules committees, court administrators, legislators,
academics, public legal educators, law reform institutes, legal aid societies,
arbitrators, mediators and librarians. Once these contacts have been established,
we will identify and begin collecting the unpublished materials on civil justice
issues in each Canadian jurisdiction and will then catalogue these materials so
that they can be included in the full-text database on our website.
We are very grateful for funding we have received from the Law Foundation of British
Columbia and the Alberta Law Foundation for clearinghouse projects in their respective
provinces, as well as from the Canadian Bar Law for the Future Fund to enable
us to proceed in the federal jurisdiction. We are pursuing parallel funding from
each provincial and territorial Law Foundation so that we can ensure that the
work being undertaken in each Canadian jurisdiction will be included in the clearinghouse.
The unpublished materials that we are seeking include draft rules and legislation,
reports, commentary, articles, minutes, surveys and research papers on civil justice
initiatives. If you are storing unpublished materials in your filing cabinet or
on the shelf in your office, don't feel that you need to wait for a direct request
from the Forum . . . we would welcome your phone call or
e-mail message.
Please visit our website for more information about the "Civil Justice Clearinghouse
Project", including a list of the subject headings which we have developed for
our bibliographic database and which will be used to classify both the published
and unpublished materials in our civil justice clearinghouse collection.