The Yukon's legal aid director says additional funding announced by the territorial government Tuesday is welcome, but comes too little too late for some.

"It's about fairness, it's about access to justice,” Nils Clarke said Tuesday. "We don't want to be treated like poor cousins.”

The Legal Services Society, which administers legal aid, had to temporarily suspend its poverty law services in the wake of a $400,000 operational deficit.

That means that since the end of September, the society could not fund its program offering legal support for low-income residents dealing with issues of social assistance, disabilities, refugee claims, pensions or landlord-tenant matters.

The program will be suspended until at least early 2014, the society stated.

Clarke added that reduced services stemming from lower budgets can hit aboriginal women and children particularly hard.

Legal matters like divorce, child custody and social assistance are not constitutionally mandated as criminal, and are thus higher on the budgetary chopping block.

The government recently agreed to add $200,000 to the 2013-14 legal aid budget.

"The legal aid program in Yukon is efficient and well-run but it has been facing cost pressures in each of the past three years,” Justice Minister Mike Nixon said in a release Tuesday.

"These funds will assist legal aid in meeting its funding requirements for the remainder of this fiscal year.”

Clarke said he had been asking for more money since April, when he first saw the budget for the fiscal year, now more than halfway over.

"We'd certainly prefer to have this announcement than not have this announcement,” Clarke said.

"But (the government) haven't stepped up to the modest degree that we wanted them to step up in the last five or six years, and it's coming to a bit of a head.”

The society's original $1.6-million budget for 2013-14 is roughly $200,000 lower than last year's, he said.

Legal aid represents defendants in 95 per cent of all criminal cases in the Yukon, according to the society. It is involved in 100 per cent of child apprehension cases.

Legal aid handles family matters like child apprehension and custody, involuntary committals at hospitals on mental health grounds and poverty law cases, on top of criminal cases.

"A lot of Yukoners think we just do criminal matters; we don't just do criminal matters,” Clarke said.

The minister said his department is working with the society to review next year's budget and come up with recommendations before the end of the calendar year.

Clarke said he would much prefer to set a higher core funding level "instead of banging our heads on a bi-monthly or monthly basis” and asking for more money further into the year.

"I get it; there are ‘sexier' projects out there, but I think it's skewed,” he said.

Clarke is requesting a budget of more than $2 million for 2014-15.

"That way, we wouldn't have to come back asking for more during the fiscal year.”

He said that budget would roughly match that of the Justice department's community justice project and victims services program, which offers support to victims of crime and abuse.

"Legal aid's not asking to be a fat cat. We run a pretty lean ship compared to the other two territories,” Clarke said.

Legal aid received a one-time funding increase of $235,000 in the 2011-12 fiscal year to cover high-cost cases before the courts, the Justice department stated.

The program also received $180,000 in additional one-time funding to cover costs for the 2010-11 year.