Criminal defence lawyers in Ottawa voted unanimously on Monday to join a growing boycott of legal aid cases involving clients facing murder, and gangs and guns charges.

About 500 lawyers in Toronto, Kingston and other Ontario cities are already taking part in the boycott being advocated by the Criminal Lawyers' Association in an effort to push the province to boost legal aid funding.

According to the group's website, it is trying to highlight "a notorious imbalance in Ontario's criminal justice system between the government's funding of police and prosecution resources, and legal aid defence counsel resources" that is unfair to those who rely on legal aid. It alleges the government has not lived up to repeated promises to fix the problem.

About 80 of the 125 members of the Defence Counsel Association of Ottawa attended Monday's closed-door vote. But all members, including those who didn't show up in person, supported the motion to join the boycott, said Mark Ertel, president of the association.

Ertel told CBC News the group expects to start rejecting legal aid cases in the coming weeks.

Funding up $51M over 3 years

Ontario Attorney General Chris Bentley was not available to comment. However, ministry spokeswoman Valerie Hopper said the ministry has boosted funding for Legal Aid Ontario by $51M over the past three years, including a third five-per-cent increase to the rate paid to defence lawyers.

"This increase does not make up for the cuts and freezes to legal aid over the previous 15 years," she acknowledged.

She added that the ministry will continue to work with its partners to "to ensure that there is a renewed and sustainable legal aid system that contributes to the effectiveness of the justice sector … and is there for the disadvantaged families, women and children who need it."

Ottawa criminal defence lawyer Norm Boxall said he has already been declining legal aid cases for months, as the attorney general won't negotiate fair rates.

Overhead 'eats up all the money'

He said even with his 30 years of experience, the province will only pay him $97 an hour, almost none of which ends up in his own pocket.

"I have to pay overhead out of that, which eats up all the money, and essentially I'd be working for free," he said, adding that his firm's costs include an office, equipment such as computers, a library and a secretary.

Boxall added it's not just lawyers' fees that are at issue, but also legal aid budgets overall. For example, he said, he is only allowed to pay a psychiatrist $130 an hour to testify, whereas the Crown can pay $200 an hour.

"So when we're out looking for experts, the experts know that the rate of pay is better on one side than the other. How can that be fair?"

The association raised the issue in a letter to the attorney general in April, following earlier discussions and studies, alleging defence lawyers have been given a pay increase of only 15 per cent since 1987 — a period during which they say the consumer price index increased 75 per cent. Meanwhile, they said, Crown lawyers received a 57 per cent increase between 1997 and 2007.

On June 1, the association's board requested senior Toronto members to boycott homicide and guns and gangs legal cases, effective immediately.

With files from Julia Kilpatrick