Assistant Professor Anna Lund
Assistant Professor Anna Lund is the recipient of a two-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant, awarded to individuals involved in developing new research questions and fostering research in its early stages.
Her grant will support research into the relationship between medical bankruptcy in Canada and public programs such as the federal employment insurance sickness benefit and provincial workers' compensation programs, which provide income support to ill and injured Canadians.
Many Canadians cite medical problems as a cause of their bankruptcy. According to Lund, previous research on this topic suggests that a reduction of income due to an unexpected medical crisis is a key cause of financial distress.
Lund has long had an interest in researching Canadian bankruptcy law. After starting her legal career in private practice where she had the opportunity to work on many corporate bankruptcy cases, she returned to graduate school in 2010. There, she shifted her focus to include personal bankruptcy law.
While many stakeholders involved in corporate bankruptcy have the means to hire lawyers to examine the issues that arise in those proceedings, "there is not the same money available for most personal bankruptcy issues, and as a result it's an under examined area of law," said Lund.
For Lund, the importance of bankruptcy among Canadians cannot be overstated, particularly at a time when Canadians are more indebted than ever and bankruptcy is one of the tools available when that debt becomes unmanageable.
Due to the prevalence of debt and bankruptcy in Canada, "we have to make sure the process is working well," said Lund.
According to the Government of Canada's 2016 Insolvency Statistics in Canada annual report, 129,727 Canadians filed for insolvency - meaning they were unable to repay their debts and required some form of debt relief.
Lund's PhD dissertation, completed in 2015 at the University of British Columbia, looked at how the personal bankruptcy system sorted debtors into two groups: those who were considered deserving of debt relief and those who were not. In this new project, she will study how similar assessments are made in public income support programs.
"This grant is intended for me to start studying those [public income support] programs and understand how those same sort of assessments about deservingness get made - who gets to access those programs and who doesn't? I guess the big question is, if we have these programs, why do we still have people going into bankruptcy for medical reasons? Where are the programs falling short?" said Lund.
Since the Insight Development Grant encourages the study of under examined areas of research, Lund, who will be working closely with a student Research Assistant over the two year period, is excited to share her passion for academia. Through the grant, the students working closely with Lund will receive funding to put together projects of their own related to Lund's research. They'll then have the opportunity to travel to conferences and present their ideas to scholars, students and practicing lawyers.
"The SSHRC supports training for the next generation of researchers, so that's something I'm really excited about. It's a chance for some of the law students to get a taste of what it's like to be an academic," said Lund.
With the research and information she gathers over the next two years, Lund plans to publish academic articles and public educations pieces for the individuals who are trying to navigate public income support programs and the lawyers who are trying to assist them.
Lund volunteers with the Edmonton Community Legal Centre, a local organization that provides legal services to persons living with low income. Since volunteer lawyers are often called on to provide legal advice on topics that fall outside their normal areas of practice, she hopes her research can add to the library of resources already available to equip them to better assist clients.
According to Lund, "engaging in this kind of public education is one way that legal academics can help to address the lack of access to justice in the Canadian legal system."