TORONTO - A promise to increase fees for legal aid lawyers does little to solve the key problems saddling Ontario's legal system and is likely to cost taxpayers more than what it gives them, opposition critics said Monday.

The province agreed Sunday to increase the rates paid to lawyers in the cash-strapped legal aid program. The 11th-hour deal ended a months-long boycott over pay discrepancies between defence and Crown attorneys as it threatened to escalate.

It's a deal described as a win by both the government and the Criminal Lawyers' Association, which spearheaded the boycott.

But to New Democrat Howard Hampton, the agreement doesn't address the bigger picture.

"It doesn't do anything about the fact that there are all kinds of people charged with criminal offences who cannot get a legal aid certificate in the first place," said Hampton.

"And this will do nothing for the dire situation on the family law side -- you've got literally hundreds of thousands of people who have custody issues, support issues, who cannot get a legal aid certificate."

Hampton said he was also worried the government will pay for budget increases -- estimated by some to become as high as $80 million -- by making it even more difficult for people to get the certificates needed to access legal aid in the first place.

Cuts to legal aid operations across the province are another concern, Hampton said.

"They're already shutting down the legal aid office in a number of communities and forcing people to use some 1-800 number to contact some central office," he said.

To Progressive Conservative Ted Chudleigh, the deal amounted to simply "throwing money at the problem."

"The court delay times, all the issues surrounding getting to trial and getting a court case through to resolution hasn't changed, and that's the big problem in Ontario," said Chudleigh.

"It's a system that's broken and they had an opportunity to fix it and they didn't."

The province committed to a 40 per cent increase in lawyer fees over seven years, but says it's too early to tell what, if any, additional funding will be required.

But while the government hasn't committed to an exact dollar figure in its agreement, it did promise to fund rate increases for three additional years.

James Morton, the past president of the Ontario Bar Association, called the deal a step in the right direction, but said the rate increases weren't big enough for "earth-shattering changes."

"It's going to be very difficult to see how that can cover the tariff increase without doing some fairly radical cuts in other places," he said.

"(But) seven years from now the economy will be in a different place ... so maybe they will be able to find the funding."

Morton said the legal aid changes will not only help people seeking criminal lawyers but also those facing cases in family and civil court.

"Because lawyers were simply unable to make a living doing family legal aid, they were leaving the field and that meant that people who qualified to get legal aid, people who needed legal aid for custody issues, for child support, in many cases were simply not getting legal representation," he said.

"They were representing themselves at court, which in one way adds huge cost but also has a real impact on the quality of justice."

More than 100 people in Ontario who have needed a lawyer paid at legal aid rates were unable to get one because of the job action.

Most legal aid money goes to single mothers who are living below the poverty line.