The Parkdale Community Legal Services’ clinic is considering cutting up to 10 positions — half its workforce — due to legal aid budget cuts, which the clinic’s director said will jeopardize services to some of the most vulnerable Ontarians.

The clinic was hit hardest by recent cuts to clinic budgets made by Legal Aid Ontario, the provincial agency which funds Ontario’s 73 community legal clinics. LAO imposed a 45 per cent cut over two years, or about $1 million of Parkdale’s $2.3 million budget, arguing that demographics in the community have changed dramatically since the clinic first opened in the 1970s as one of the province’s first legal clinics.

LAO’s cost-cutting came after the Ford government cut the agency’s budget in April — a 30 per cent reduction of the previously anticipated $456 million provincial allocation.

The Parkdale clinic is now asking LAO’s clinic committee — made up of members of its board of directors — to reconsider the cut, not just to their clinic, but to every clinic in Ontario.

“We’re asking that it be reversed and that there be a recommitment to the full breadth of clinic law services that make access to justice in Ontario palatable for those living in poverty,” said clinic executive director Johanna Macdonald.

A spokesman for Legal Aid Ontario confirmed the clinic committee received Parkdale’s reconsideration request this week.

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“The clinic committee can confirm, reverse or vary the original funding decision. The reconsideration process can take several months, to allow the clinics an opportunity to be heard,” said Graeme Burk.

Much of the Parkdale clinic’s work has focused on tenants’ and workers’ rights. Staff have helped low-income workers access their unpaid wages and basic entitlements, and over the last eight years recovered $4.2 million for low-income workers, Macdonald said.

“Equally crucial is the work we do for housing rights, as the neighbourhood we serve faces intense gentrification, with rental housing stock being held by few corporate landlords,” she said.

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Leizl Regalado, who works as a caregiver in Toronto, said the clinic gave her hope when it represented her in a case at the Ministry of Labour. She had had to pay an illegal recruitment fee to a recruiter, the clinic said, and won an order from the ministry to be paid back just over $2,000.

“At the time they helped me I was being abused by one of the agencies. I don’t have family here. No one could help me, I don’t know anyone here in Toronto,” she told the Star. “I feel sad when I hear about (the cuts) because they are a big help, and give hope to abused people like me.”

Macdonald said her clinic’s work has become even more crucial as clinics that focus exclusively on workers’ issues have been also hit particularly hard in the LAO cuts. The Injured Workers Community Legal Clinic reported last month that it would have to cut four of its 10 staff members and would stop taking on new cases.

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Meanwhile, the 10 staff members at the Industrial Accident Victims Group of Ontario, another workers’ clinic, said they would be taking pay cuts instead of imposing layoffs, and would also stop taking new cases.

The LAO cuts to clinic budgets in June were described by the executive director of the Association of Community Legal Clinics of Ontario as a “directed attack” on Toronto and on clinics that primarily do advocacy work that challenges the government.

Toronto neighbourhood legal clinics, which provide general legal services to low-income Ontarians, were hit especially hard. A total of $1 million was cut across 13 of the clinics, while Parkdale received a separate $1 million cut.

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