Samenvatting

Providing access to justice is a major challenge for any judicial system. Canada has gone to great lengths to meet this challenge over the past thirty years, in part by developing alternative dispute resolution methods. Unfortunately, results have been mixed. Canadian society is currently preparing to renew its vision of access to justice and the contribution of dispute resolution methods in meeting that challenge. What lessons can we learn from Canada’s experience? What are the new directions and initiatives for access to justice? Our paper suggests that the Canadian experience can make two contributions to the access to justice debate. First, we suggest that the notion is evolving in the legal community from an institutional perspective to a contextual vision of access to justice. Second, we point out an evolution of alternative or appropriate dispute resolution methods toward a participatory justice movement. Our paper proposes a new Canadian perspective on access to justice and dispute resolution methods.