**Repost from Canadian Legal Ethics listserv**

An exciting two day B.C. Continuing Legal Education Society conference called Access to Justice for Children  will take place in Vancouver, at the Pan Pacific Hotel, on May 14-15, 2015.

From the conference description:

The Canadian legal profession is engaged in critically important discussions about access to justice. Ensuring access to justice for children must be a key component of those discussions. Children in Canada have broad legal entitlements under domestic and international law, including significant participatory rights, which have the potential to shape their everyday lives in positive ways and to protect them when they become involved in court, alternative dispute resolution (ADR), or administrative processes […] All lawyers have obligations to prepare, with the participation of children, Child Rights Impact Statements for all legislative and policy decision making.

The conference agenda can be found here.

Keynote speakers include:

• Senator Raynell Andreychuk,  a former lawyer, judge and diplomat and chaired the Senate Standing Human Rights Committee that produced the report Children: the Silenced Citizens on Canada’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and

• Dr. Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, a B.C.’s Children’s Representative and a passionate advocate for children and for effective legal representation for them.

Other out of province speakers who are committed to advancing children’s rights include:

• Lucy McSweeney, the Children’s Lawyer for Ontario,
• Christian Whalen, Chair of the CBA National Children’s Law Committee, and
• Lisa Wolff, UNICEF Canada.

Judge Marion Buller and Judge Rose Raven from the B.C. Provincial Court and Justice Margot Fleming from B.C. Supreme Court) also bring their considerable knowledge and keen interest in justice for children to our access to justice discussions.