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Order # 986111-65203 $104 Softcover October 2014 approx. 2120 pages 978-0-7798-6111-8 Annual volumes supplied on standing order subscription Shipping and handling are extra. Price(s) subject to change without notice and subject to applicable taxes. 00224HC-A46639 New group forms to oppose Toronto legal clinic mergers by yamri Taddese Law Times O pposition to a proposal to re- place 16 legal clinics in the Greater Toronto Area with three larger centres is gather- ing steam with local politicians expressing their concerns and a new group emerging to rally resistance to the idea. As clinics across the Toronto area pre- pare for a vote on the proposal before the end of the year, opponents are ramping up resistance to a plan they say will push Toronto's most marginalized people fur- ther to edge. Some of them formed a new group, Keep Neighbourhood Legal Clin- ics, following a recent public meeting at Toronto city hall. "An idea that might resonate well with Torontonians is when has amalgamation ever served us well?" says Fathima Cader, a law lecturer at the University of Wind- sor and a former staff member at Parkdale Community Legal Services. "I think we're at a point where we should be able to ap- preciate that local needs are best addressed through local resources." A steering committee, made up of representatives from 16 Greater Toronto Area clinics, promised an 18-per-cent in- crease in frontline staff if up to five larger organizations replaced the existing ones. e plan would redistribute resources more equally across the region, according to the steering committee. But opponents of the plan, many of whom are from Kensington-Bellwoods Community Legal Services and the Park- dale clinic, say the increase in frontline staff would be the equivalent of adding only about one more employee at each of the existing organizations. e Kensington-Bellwoods clinic's board of directors has already voted to re- ject the proposal. While the Parkdale orga- nization's board hasn't yet taken a position, some current and former staff members are vociferously resisting the closure of one of Toronto's oldest legal clinics. By closing the existing legal clinics, the steering committee says it wants to start with "a blank slate" and redistribute re- sources more equally across low-income neighbourhoods. Opened in 1971, Parkdale's legal clinic is now more than 40 years old. "ere is no such thing as a blank slate when you have that kind of history," says Cader. "More practically, what that means is denying the decades of community build- ing and trust and relationship building that has come out of that time," she continues. "e suggestion is that rather than actu- ally continue to cultivate those relation- ships, to take strength from that input from communities, we're going to pretend that doesn't exist. We're going to ignore it and block it out altogether." Noting some of her clients at the Park- dale clinic were sick or suicidal or had disabilities, Cader says many of them wouldn't travel to a new location to speak to lawyers. Although the steering commit- tee says there will be several access points across the city, details are missing on where they'll be and who will do the intake work, according to Cader. Doug Ewart, one of the founding stu- dent staff members at the Parkdale organi- zation, says the proposed model of 30 staff members, including two receptionists and three support staff at each location, just doesn't stand up to the real needs the clin- ics are going to have. "I don't know anybody who thinks two receptionists can handle one-third of To- ronto," he says. "e work isn't going down . . . and yet at the moment what several re- ceptionists are doing, they're saying only two can do it." For his part, Jack De Klerk, the co- chairman of the steering committee for the clinic transformation project, says the op- position is coming from only a few clinics. He notes that in drawing up the proposal, the committee had to take into account underserved areas such as Scarborough. "We're talking also about redistrib- uting the resources, and there are areas in Toronto that are, relatively speaking, very under resourced. For example . . . Kensington-Bellwoods serves less than half the number of poor people per staff than Scarborough does," he says. "If every- one is going to come up to Kensington- Bellwoods' level [in terms of resources], we'd have to double staff everywhere," he adds, noting it's unlikely the government would fund such a plan. As for receptionists and support staff, De Klerk says the average legal worker doesn't use legal assistants. But opposition politicians who repre- sent Parkdale-High Park have waded into the issue and are supporting the oppo- nents. Cheri DiNovo, the NDP MPP for Parkdale-High Park, says the proposal is in fact a cost-cutting scheme by the provin- cial government. "I've heard the other side speaking about less bricks and mortar and more lawyers in the community, but the simple reality is — and they're very aware of this — Legal Aid Ontario and every other ministry in the government for that matter has been asked to make cuts," she says. "Really, the agenda here from the provin- cial government's point of view is cuts to legal aid," she adds, suggesting the answer to un- derserved areas like Scarborough isn't to take away resources from other neighbourhoods. DiNovo says she has written to the at- torney general of Ontario expressing her concerns about marginalized groups in Parkdale losing access to clinics. NDP MPP Jagmeet Singh, his party's critic for the attorney general, says he, too, is against the merger proposal. "It's a question of efficiency versus ac- cess, and we can't balance in favour of effi- ciency at the traumatic cost of access. at's what the problem is. is isn't just a little bit of an access issue; this is a huge access is- sue. So there's got to be another efficiency we can find . . . but it can't be at the cost of making it inaccessible." De Klerk, however, says clients are al- ready taking transit to get to the clinics and notes one of the three proposed mega clinics may well be in Parkdale. He says opponents of the proposal are "being disingenuous." "ey're not looking at what's being pro- posed. ey're just saying, 'Please leave us alone.' ey're not thinking about people who are not being served." Ewart says it's hard to understand why the steering committee chose to close down clinics when it could have tried to redistribute resources in other ways. If push comes to shove, Ewart says it may be possible to relocate some staff from the relatively well-resourced clinics to under- served areas, something he says is a better alternative to "destroying clinics." LT

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