A decision by Legal Aid Ontario to cut funding to clinics engaged in advocacy will have a direct and negative impact on the vulnerable clients they are still expected to serve, the head of a Toronto legal clinic warns. Specialty legal clinics across Toronto were told on Wednesday what the provincial government’s 30-per-cent cut to Legal Aid Ontario’s overall budget would mean for their organizations. Those clinics include the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO), Income Security Advocacy Centre and the Canadian Environmental Law Association, which will all be losing funding put toward community development work and legal reform. Legal Aid Ontario this week said that available funds are best spent on direct client work. “This was a really difficult exercise, because we recognize that there’s value in systemic work because it creates efficiencies, we recognize there’s value,” said Jayne Mallin, LAO’s vice-president of clinic law services, explaining the decision. “But we also wanted to ensure that if we’ve got to take the money from somewhere, we did not want to take it from clinics providing direct client services in the community.” Kenn Hale, ACTO’s director of legal services, said the move will interfere with the clinic’s ability to push for systemic changes that provide a direct service to many tenants.“Legal Aid Ontario is presenting some kind of narrative that the work we do isn’t direct services to clients and not really valuable and can be done on a pro bono or in-your-spare-time approach,” said Kenn Hale, ACTO’s director of legal services.The clinic, he told the Star, will lose 25 per cent of its overall budget, about $356,000 over two years, and an additional $183,000 from their tenant duty council program, a walk-in service for tenants “facing immediate crisis” and eviction at the Landlord and Tenant Board. Read more:Sweeping cuts to legal c ...
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