Community legal clinics are demanding to meet with Attorney General Caroline Mulroney over the provincial government’s cuts to the legal aid budget, the full extent of which may only be announced next week after the legislature has risen for the summer.

The clinics, which provide legal services mostly to low-income and racialized clients, say any cuts to their budgets will affect front-line services and have a direct impact on access to justice for the most vulnerable Ontarians. They’ve been waiting to know more since the Ford government tabled an April budget that slashed Legal Aid Ontario funding by 30 per cent this year.

In an email to staff at the end of April, Legal Aid Ontario CEO David Field said the provincial agency anticipated saving $15 million in 2019-20 by making cuts to the clinic system budget, but LAO has provided few details since then.

Mulroney has been regularly questioned on the cuts in the legislature, including on Tuesday when she said, “We are working closely with clinics, with lawyers who provide legal aid, to ensure that they’re able to provide the work that they have been doing now for some time.”

According to a May 30 email from Legal Aid Ontario to the clinics and obtained by the Star, the agency said it expects to advise the clinics of their “approved annual funding allocations” within the next two weeks. The last day of the spring sitting of the legislature is Thursday.

“(Mulroney) said she’s been consulting with legal aid and legal clinics, and as far as we know, we don’t know anyone in the legal clinic system who she’s consulted with,” said Shalini Konanur, executive director of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario.

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Lenny Abramowicz, executive director of the Association of Community Legal Clinics of Ontario, also said he’s unaware of any discussions between clinics and the attorney general since the cuts were announced. He said he met with Mulroney’s policy adviser after the budget was tabled, but that he has not been able to meet with Mulroney herself and that she has not responded to a letter he sent on behalf of the Alliance for Sustainable Legal Aid, which he chairs.

“I would love to have a conversation with her,” he said. “It is impossible, quite frankly — you can’t remove $15 million from the clinic system budget without services to low-income people being lost.”

Konanur said her clinic has tried “many times” to speak with Mulroney, but to no avail, including on Monday when the clinic was mentioned in a question to the attorney general in the legislature by NDP justice critic Sara Singh.

“We’ve had good success in meeting MPPs across parties, but we have not had any success in having contact with the attorney general or the premier,” Konanur said.

When asked by the Star if Mulroney has actually met with any legal clinics, her spokesman Jesse Robichaud said the ministry and Legal Aid Ontario “have been working closely together to ensure fiscal accountability in order to protect these important front line services.”

He said Legal Aid Ontario was leading a consultation with clinics, the results of which were shared with the clinics last week. (Legal Aid Ontario also told the Star that they shared with the ministry results from town halls and a survey conducted with the clinics on the provincial budget.)

Robichaud said the attorney general’s office has met or spoken with six organizations of the Alliance for Sustainable Legal Aid since the budget was tabled.

Singh, the NDP justice critic, said “the timing is very convenient for the government” if the full details of the cuts to the clinics are only announced next week, when the legislature is on its summer break.

“We’ve spent so much time in the legislature going back and forth on beer but it would be nice to see something like legal aid prioritized,” Singh told the Star Wednesday. “We’ve had night sittings, none of this is being raised or discussed. In fact, when we ask the attorney general questions, we get roundabout answers.”

LAO still won’t give an exact date as to when it will tell the clinics about their budgets for the year.

“Legal Aid Ontario has been working to determine a way forward for clinics that will minimize impact to direct client service,” said agency spokesman Graeme Burk. “To do this requires thoughtful planning on the part of our staff and board and that takes time.”

Konanur, whose clinic serves close to 5,000 clients a year, said she’s especially worried about how the cuts will affect the community she and her staff serve.

“Our clinic does a tremendous amount of gender-based violence work, it keeps me up at night thinking ‘What if we can’t help a client in a forced marriage trying to flee that marriage?’” Konanur said. “We are left not even knowing where to refer people if we can’t provide the service.”

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It’s a similar situation at the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, where clinic director Avvy Go actually had the chance to meet with Mulroney earlier this year before the government revealed it was cutting legal aid funding. Go said she has been unsuccessful in trying to meet with Mulroney again since the budget was tabled.

“If I knew back then I would have talked to her more about why it’s so important not to cut clinics in particular,” Go told the Star. “I want to believe her when she says she wants to protect direct client services, I want to believe her, but I don’t think she understands that even a small percentage cut to the clinics would mean a cut to direct service. That’s something I hope I will have a chance to explain to her again.

“As someone who was trained as a lawyer, I would hope she appreciates how important this is.”