It’s not news — that the executive director of the African Canadian Legal Clinic (ACLC) used the clinic’s credit card to purchase a $754 diamond ring back in 2007. And that she repaid the amount, twice, she says, immediately after the purchase, and again after an audit flagged the fiscal no-no.It’s not news that Margaret Parsons has had a running battle with Legal Aid Ontario (LAO), the government agency that funds 79 such clinics across the province. And that she loathes them as much as they seem to loathe her.It’s not news that the pitched battle, now into its 17th year of public hostility, has divided the black community into pro-Parsons and anti-Parsons camps — all the while feeding into the crab-in-the-barrel stereotype ascribed to such historical conflict.It’s not news that LAO has been trying to nail Parsons for years — accusing her of improper financial management, poor fiscal controls, misstatement of statistics, misuse of LAO funds for purposes other than intended, finagling with membership lists, insufficient corporate oversight. . . And it’s not news that LAO is still trying.The relationship is permanently broken. Despite this, the last declaration from the LAO committee that decides on sanctions against clinics had to agree that, “some progress, if belatedly, has been made. We note for example, that it finally appears to be the case that apart from the unresolved concerns relating to inter-fund transfers, the recommendations from the 2012 PwC forensic audit report appear to have now been completely adopted by ACLC.”Stop the press. Breaking news.But, no. It is the committee’s caustic June 2016 report that is being leaked to the media by agents quietly representing LAO.As reported this week in the Star by Metro’s May Warren and Vicky Mochama, that report said the clinic, which has advocated for the Black community for more than 20 years, was in “fundament ...
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