The South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario and Mississauga Community Legal Services are holding a town hall in Mississauga on July 30 to provide on update on the impacts of recent legal aid cuts by the provincial government.

The town hall meeting will begin at 6 p.m. on Tuesday at the Dixie-Bloor Neighbourhood Centre in Worskhop Room #14.

According to a release, several topics will be covered including: “What the legal aid cuts may mean for you, how the cuts have little to do with refugee underfunding, lowering the debt, or finding efficiencies and what you can do to fight the cuts.”

Solicitor General of Ontario Sylvia Jones was in Brampton earlier this month and said the cuts to Legal Aid Ontario (LAO) were necessary to balance the province’s books.

“I think you have to look at Legal Aid Ontario generally and go back to core business. One per cent in the fiscal reality of what Ontario is dealing with, I don’t think is an unreasonable expectation,” said Solicitor General Sylvia Jones in a recent stop in Brampton.

She also indicated the province intends to proceed with the cuts despite objections from a several local Peel Region representatives at both the municipal and provincial levels.

Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, Caledon Mayor Allan Thompson and Peel Region Chair Nando Iannicca sent a joint letter to the province on June 26 asking Premier Doug Ford and the office of the Attorney General to reconsider and restore the funding.

In an email, Mississauga Community Legal Services co-executive director Doug Kwan said the province is minimizing the true impact on LAO and legal aid services in Peel, which he said will be a topic of discussion at the town hall meeting.

“Contrary to what has been said, the cuts to Legal Aid are disproportionate compared to the overall cuts this year to the Ministry of the Attorney General’s $2 billion budget which funds LAO, in fact LAO is shouldering 87% of the Ministry’s cuts,” said Kwan.



