Social Policy in Ontario

Against all odds, Legal Aid Ontario is getting better

Posted on March 27, 2015 in Inclusion Delivery System

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TheStar.com – Opinion/Commentary – Nobody thought he could do it but John McCamus has strengthened and expanded Legal Aid Ontario.
Mar 26 2015.   By: Carol Goar, Star Columnist

Lawyers were dubious. Anti-poverty activists rolled their eyes. Social assistance recipients, visible minorities, injured workers and people with disabilities shrugged: they’d heard too many public officials promise more than they kcould deliver.

But after eight years at the helm of Legal Aid Ontario, John McCamus is winning over the skeptics.

He said he would introduce a dedicated mental-health strategy to help low-income Ontarians with psychiatric problems (who are disproportionately criminalized and incarcerated). He did.

He said he would stretch Legal Aid Ontario’s constrained budget to deliver more services — local offices in every courthouse, a toll-free help line offering up to 20 minutes of legal advice, mediation for divorcing couples and a network of family-law information centres. He did.

He said he would strengthen Ontario’s 76 community legal aid clinics. This month, Legal Aid Ontario (LAO) announced $4.2 million in additional funding for the clinics in the greatest need. “This year’s investment is an important first step in LAO’s strategy to expand financial eligibility, access to justice and clinic law services across Ontario,” McCamus said. “Ontario’s clinics are the foundation of poverty law in this province and we are committed to helping them.”

The overworked lawyers who run those clinics — once his fiercest critics — are starting to come around. Lenny Abramowicz, executive director of the Association of Community Legal Clinics of Ontario, who accused LAO of overlooking “the poorest and most disempowered clients” five years ago, greeted McCamus’s announcement with unreserved praise. “With these resources, community clinics will be able to provide more services to more of the most vulnerable people in our province,” he said. “This new money is an important step along the road toward increased access to justice and poverty reduction here in Ontario.”

Not everyone is happy. Forty-eight clinics — including Jane-Finch, Rexdale, South Etobicoke, Kensington Bellwoods and Parkdale in Toronto — got no funding increase in this round. But there will be a $5.6-million second round. And it is hard to dispute LAO’s distribution plan; clinics with the fewest resources per client were helped first.

All 17 of Ontario’s specialty clinics — those serving linguistic minorities, racialized people, individuals with disabilities, social assistance recipients, low-income tenants, injured workers and the elderly — received an $86,000 increase. (There is a separate aboriginal justice strategy.)

McCamus, who conducted a comprehensive review of Ontario’s legal aid system in 1997, is acutely aware that only the very poor qualify for legal aid. He doesn’t have the authority to raise the threshold. But he has lobbied the government to do it throughout his tenure.

This year, for the first time since 1997, the answer was yes. Premier Kathleen Wynne included a $95.7-million increase in legal aid funding in her government’s inaugural budget. Attorney General Madeleine Meilleur followed up with an announcement last fall that the province would expand the legal aid system by 6 per cent annually over three years. This allowed McCamus to bolster community legal aid clinics, which deal with everything from immigration problems to child support disputes, eviction notices and appeals to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.

The agency’s better-known criminal law side — which provides legal aid certificates (vouchers) to private lawyers willing to represent low-income Ontarians facing criminal law charges — remains extremely restrictive. To qualify, an individual’s income must fall below $11,448. The agency puts it simply, but bluntly, on its website: “Our clients have one thing in common — they are people with low or no income.”

That excludes the majority of taxpayers who carry the $374-million cost of the system at a time when few can afford to hire a private lawyer. Middle-income Ontarians often go to court unrepresented, confused and scared. McCamus is deeply concerned that access to justice is slipping out of reach for all but the richest litigants.

But his mandate is to assist low-income Ontarians trapped in abusive relationships and immigration snarls; powerless against child welfare bureaucrats, social assistance officials, police, prosecutors and workplace safety officials and threatened with eviction. For years McCamus had to do more with less. Finally he has the resources to do more with more.

There are still pessimists and naysayers. There are those who blame him for the lean years and those who resent him for providing legal assistance for the poor that middle-income Ontarians can’t afford. There are those who dismiss his reforms as negligible and those who regard poverty law as a waste of public funds.

But against all odds, McCamus is making progress.

< http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/03/26/against-all-odds-legal-aid-ontario-is-getting-better-goar.html >

Tags: budget, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, poverty, rights, standard of living

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