A community legal aid clinic providing services to low-income Asian clients is filing a formal appeal this week to Legal Aid Ontario following the provincial agency’s announcement earlier this month of sweeping funding cuts to several clinics across Toronto.

On paper, the cuts announced by Legal Aid Ontario amounted to 1.2 per cent of the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic’s annual budget, but the clinic says it will be hit hard by the agency’s decision not to fund in-year budget increases, including for changes to rent.

Avvy Go, clinic cirector at CSALC, which primarily serves people in the Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian communities, told the Star Monday the clinic is facing a 250-per-cent rent increase when its lease at 180 Dundas St. W. expires on Oct. 1.

The clinic plans to appeal the provincial agency’s cuts because it cannot afford to cover the added expense without additional funding from LAO.

Without an increase from LAO, Go said the clinic will be forced to lay off a caseworker in order to maintain a physical office.

“While Premier Ford and the former Attorney General have repeatedly stated that there will be no cuts to direct client service, we know that with fewer clinic staff, our clients will receive less legal services,” Go said in a press release, adding that the clinic had made a request for LAO to help cover the rent increase for the remainder of the year, but that request was denied.

“Despite the cuts, LAO has directed legal clinics to maintain the same level of client services. The result will be that our remaining staff will have to take on an even greater workload in order for CSALC to meet this unreasonable directive.”

Legal Aid Ontario, which is the main funder of Ontario’s 73 community legal clinics, announced the cuts in response to the provincial budget, which cut 30 per cent from a previously anticipated $456-million provincial allocation for the agency.

The cuts imposed on clinics, totalling about $14.5 million, are part of a larger cost-cutting effort to save about $70 to $75 million this year. The cuts will also see reductions to LAO’s internal operations, to its funding for private lawyers in court, and to immigration and refugee services.

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