The Perpetual Promise Trap

$8.5 million in funding for community jurists, announced this morning. On paper, good news. But it’s the latest in a long string of announcements — and more will rain down before September’s Quebec Summit on the Rule of Law. A short anatomy of a strategy: the perpetual promise.

I — The triggerAnother round of funding, another piece of good news

This morning, the Minister of Justice, the Chambre des notaires and the Barreau du Québec jointly announced $8.5 million in funding to hire some thirty jurists in the community sector. Twenty-six organizations and university legal clinics will benefit, offering first-line services in housing, consumer, family and youth-protection law, over three years.

Let’s be honest: on paper, this is good news. No serious person is going to sneer at frontline legal help for the people who need it most. If you cross paths with one of these jurists at a neighbourhood organization next year, so much the better — it’s useful, it’s concrete, and it will help real people.

But let’s step back. This announcement doesn’t stand alone. It is part of the « Justice citoyens » agreement — $80 million announced in April 2025 between the ministry, the Chambre des notaires and the Barreau — and it comes ahead of a very busy fall: the first Quebec Summit on the Rule of Law, in September. Between now and then, expect a steady cadence of announcements. Bring on the promises. There will be plenty.

II — The mechanismAnnouncing is already acting — in appearance

When trust erodes, an institution can do two things. It can tackle the causes of that erosion, which is long and uncomfortable. Or it can prove that it is « working on the problem »: announce an investment, a new service, a summit, a solemn declaration. This is a political response — a gesture that displays movement, fills the media space, and, above all, costs nothing today.

We are, in fact, in an election campaign. We know how pre-election promises work: numerous, generous, dated for after the vote, and only half-believed. Announcements about justice, right now, follow the same tempo. The closer the Summit gets, the more the flow intensifies. This is no coincidence of the calendar — it is an occupation of the space, designed to saturate the public conversation.

III — The substanceTreating the symptom, avoiding the cause

The problem is not that these measures are bad. It’s that they treat the symptom while avoiding the cause.

Citizens’ trust in the justice system did not erode for lack of community jurists. It eroded from a sense of injustice: interminable procedures, costs beyond the reach of the ordinary citizen, and an apparatus reluctant to examine its own failings. We fund access from the outside — the front line, the periphery — without ever touching what is jammed on the inside.

And there is a question that no summit and no $8.5 million cheque resolves: that of self-regulation. It is the same professional order that defends its members’ interests and that judges their failings toward the public. As long as the announced reforms do not touch this knot — the real cost, the simplification of procedures, accountability to the citizen — they remain add-ons at the edge of the system. Necessary, yes. Peripheral, too.

IV — The reversalThe contrast no one misses anymore

This is where the strategy ends up turning against itself. Measures are announced, in administrative language, for « vulnerable persons. » Meanwhile, a genuinely vulnerable person keeps getting crushed by the same system, the same day. The gap between the press release and lived reality has become visible to everyone.

Because something has shifted. Citizens no longer let themselves be paid in promises. They compare today’s announcement to yesterday’s experience, and they keep the receipt. Every promise becomes a marker to be brought back out a year later: what became of the funding announced this morning? Of September’s Summit? What changed, concretely, on the ground? Without any official mandate, and without being asked, citizens have become the auditors of the justice system’s promises.

ConclusionTo protect, or to look at oneself

So yes, there will be others, more announcements, between now and September. Many others. And several will be, in themselves, good measures. But giving access to a system people no longer trust will not, on its own, resolve the crisis of trust.

Fund access: yes. Provided that access and the examination of the causes advance together. As long as we patch the outside while refusing to look at the inside, the promise — however sincere, however funded — remains a communications operation, not a reform.