It is said that a frog thrown into a pot of hot water will instinctively leap to save its life. In contrast, if the heat is turned up gradually, the frog will stay put until death ensues.

It is a gruesome metaphor, to be sure, but one that applies aptly to the sorry tale of Ontario’s legal aid program.

For more than a generation, successive governments have been turning up the temperature on Legal Aid Ontario. Its budget has been slashed time and time again. The spectrum of needy clients capable of qualifying for funding has steadily narrowed. And those lawyers who opt to work at the program’s stingy rates have jeopardized their own financial security by doing so in the name of access to justice.

Somehow, the patchwork legal aid system has sustained the torrent of blows and staggered along. However, the latest assault on legal aid — carried out by a Ford government hell bent on slashing budgets regardless of the social cost — sounds a death knell. Under the thin guise of “modernization” and “efficiency” it promises to dismantle the very underpinnings of a vital program.

The genesis of legal aid dates back to the 1960s, when concerned lawyers and judges were able to persuade politicians that the scales of justice were unfairly weighted against the criminally accused. Two tiers of justice had undeniably emerged.

The philosophical premise of fairness to the poor and disadvantaged was explicitly built into the legislation that established legal aid. In contrast, the legislation now pending will eviscerate that promise. No longer will it guarantee that legal aid “shall” provide legal services to the needy, for example. Instead, it will insert the weasel word “may.”

Instead of a robust system that provides legal help across a wide spectrum of cases, the new legislation guarantees only to fund impecunious defendants in a minuscule number of criminal matters that the court must first deem to be among the most complex and serious.

The rest will face the prospect of acting as their own lawyer — a recipe for wrongful convictions and time-consuming court delays. Finding themselves up against the might of the over-resourced state, these defendants will be at a colossal disadvantage.

The proposed act will obliterate another foundational principle of legal aid — that private lawyers are the primary vehicle for delivering legal services. This lays the groundwork for an underfunded public defender model and for paralegals to migrate into areas of the law in which they are insufficiently trained to act.

The proposed changes also eliminate the long-held idea that legal aid acts independently of the government. Under the new legislation, the province could stack Legal Aid Ontario’s board of directors with its own appointments to ensure its agenda is carried out.

All of this comes against a backdrop of cruel budget reductions. Earlier this year, a staggering $133 million — 30 per cent — was slashed from legal aid’s current budget. Another $33 million was slated to be cut in 2020.

In announcing his legislative plans this week, Attorney General Doug Downey said the next round of cuts will not take place, styling this as a reflective response to critics. Were it not for the $133 million that has already been cut, this blatant spin might have been easier to stomach.

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The erosion of the bedrock ideas underlying the legal aid program has been underway for years. The income cut-off for those attempting to qualify for legal aid, for example, long ago fell well below the poverty line, disqualifying many needy defendants. Recent changes also eliminated the right to be represented by one’s own lawyer at a bail hearing in many offences. Before long, however, these injustices are likely to seem tame by comparison.

The name the province has given this Orwellian exercise in cynicism is: The Smarter and Stronger Justice Act. Were it inclined to be more forthright, the government might have called it: An Act to Eliminate Fair and Effective Legal Representation. The promise of legal aid in Ontario is dead.