For the past three years, a Toronto legal clinic project to help undocumented workers facing wage theft and sometimes life-changing workplace injuries has wrestled with a puzzle: how do you reach people who fear being reached?But with just $150,000 a year to tackle the problem, the Centre for Spanish Speaking Peoples’ Buena Paga program managed to support hundreds of the city’s most vulnerable workers through legal assistance, a radio show on workplace rights, training and job fairs. The program also won workers an average of over $10,000 a month in unpaid entitlements.While focusing on Spanish-speaking undocumented workers, Buena Paga lawyer and co-ordinator Gloria Carrasquero says the initiative aimed to help “everyone who was knocking on our door,” regardless of where they lived, their status in Canada, or their mother tongue. Now, following Legal Aid cuts announced in April, the initiative has been axed — and Carrasquero and two other members of the Buena Paga team are out of a job.“It’s really upsetting to me that this is a program that’s being cut, when it was clearly just so effective in so many ways,” said Mary Ellen McIntyre, the CSSP’s legal clinic director. The program started in 2016 because the Ministry of Labour noticed an uptick in complaints from Spanish-speaking workers, some of whom were undocumented, she added. The ministry provided two years-worth of funding for the clinic to create Buena Paga — which means well-paid in Spanish — and provide education about rights on the job. Legal Aid Ontario took over the funding in 2018.Earlier this year the Ford government cut Legal Aid Ontario’s budget, previously anticipated to be $456-million, by 30 per cent. As a result, LAO is reducing funds for legal clinics by around $14.5 million this year. Undocumented workers are entitled to protection by provincial labour laws and the workers’ compensation system, but “mos ...
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