2.0 Sustainable Development and The Department of Justice

The Department of Justice is responsible for conducting the legal affairs of the Government of Canada as a whole, and for providing legal services to individual departments and agencies. The Department operates through the following main activities, described in more detail in the Departmental Profile, Annex A to this document:

• Government Client Services include 35 Departmental Legal Service Units that are located at client departments and agencies, the Legislative Services Branch that provides drafting services and support for regulations and legislation, and the central and regional offices that provide legal advisory services and conduct litigation and prosecutions on behalf of the government.



• Law and Policy Services ensure a responsive, fair, efficient and accessible national system of justice. The Policy Sector addresses criminal law; family, children and youth; and public law, including human rights. It develops policies on firearms, child support, legal aid, young offenders and public legal education. It also examines federal laws and regulations to ensure consistency with the Canadian Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.



• Administration and Operations provide corporate, personnel and information management services to support the Department's program delivery, internal administration and communications.

The strategic directions of the Department of Justice already include working toward an integrated justice system that is cost-effective, citizen-centred and community-focused, making it more equitable and accessible, and strengthening public confidence and trust in the justice system. By providing mechanisms to enable public participation in decision-making, access to information, and integration of key dimensions into government decisions, the legal system can significantly contribute to laying the foundation for a more sustainable future.

Access to Law

The Department of Justice is playing a proactive role to facilitate increased public access to the law. With the leadership of an Access to the Law committee several legal instruments and useful tools have been made available on the Internet:

• federal Statutes and Regulations, an annoted Access to Information Act and Privacy Act
• summaries of major court decisions on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
• legal education documents.

The Department also has the potential to significantly impact on sustainable development through the legal advice it provides to its clients, both concerning existing laws and policies and concerning law and policy reform. As the concept of sustainable development becomes increasingly salient in contemporary policy discourse, it is anticipated that the requirement for sustainable development related legal work will increase. The demand for this work will also increase as a result of the promulgation of sustainable development strategies by most of Justice's client departments and agencies.

Although sustainable development is a normative concept --and therefore subject to varying opinions as to its appropriate content --at its core lies the objective of integrating economic, environmental and social considerations. In short, it recognizes that, over time, society cannot pursue one of these goals at the expense of the others; rather, these objectives are inter-related and must be addressed together.

Accordingly, an important objective for government should be to enhance the degree to which decision-making systematically and explicitly integrates economic, environmental and social considerations. As a service organization, driven primarily by the needs and demands of its clients, the Department of Justice's main requirement in this regard is to ensure that it responds effectively and proactively to the anticipated increase in demand from its clients for legal advice to help promote sustainable development through integrated decision-making. Within the context of client service agreements, and within available resources, the Department will serve these demands.

This will require various functions and activities, including gathering and disseminating information, initiating and managing research, monitoring and coordinating activities, and liaising with client departments and the Office of the Auditor General. These functions are reflected in the first five objectives below. The sixth objective then focuses upon the stewardship actions concerning the Department's physical operations.

SDS Objectives

1. Enhance the Department's capacity to promote sustainable development by improving the awareness and knowledge of the relevant issues by Departmental staff.



2. Improve the Department's understanding of the linkages between sustainable development and the Department's legal and policy services.



3. Identify and advise on the legal status and significance of the federal government's obligations related to sustainable development.



4. Support law reform to enable the federal government to promote sustainable development more effectively.



5. Through a sustainable development network, ensure that the legal advice the Department provides to the federal government on sustainable development issues is consistent and of high quality.



6. Reduce the direct environmental impact of the Department's operations through stewardship and environmental management activities.

SDS objective #6 is distinct from SDS objectives #1 to #5 by its focus upon physical operations. Like all federal departments and agencies, the Department of Justice's operations have a direct environmental impact through, for example, the use of energy to light buildings, the vehicles its employees use, and the paper use for which lawyers are notorious.

The Department's Sustainable Development Strategy objectives and actions are summarized in the following chart according to the Department's business lines and functions. Each objective is then discussed in detail, with enumerated actions.

Department of Justice Sustainable Development Strategy: Objectives and Actions

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