After its budget was already slashed this year by more than $500,000, the Parkdale Community Legal Services’ clinic has found out it won’t face a similar cut that was planned for next year.

Parkdale is one of 11 community legal clinics that had applied to the clinic committee of Legal Aid Ontario’s board of directors to reconsider funding cuts imposed on clinics’ budgets this past spring.

Those cuts were sparked by the Ford government’s decision in April to slash by $133 million the budget of Legal Aid Ontario, the independent agency that manages the legal aid plan. LAO is also the main funder of the province’s 73 community legal clinics, which provide legal services to low-income Ontarians in areas such as housing and income security.

An LAO spokesman said of the 10 clinics that have so far received their reconsideration decisions, seven of them received some funds back, totalling about $300,000. And cuts scheduled to take place next year, such as Parkdale’s cut, will not take effect.

“In its decision, the clinic committee recognized PCLS’ unique characteristics as a hybrid of a community, educational and specialty clinic,” the Parkdale clinic said in a statement Tuesday.

“The committee emphasized that ‘the unique qualities of the clinic make it difficult to compare them to other Toronto clinics.’ As a result, ‘the clinic requires a unique approach in considering how to deal with its funding and the services it provides’ and funding for PCLS ‘needs to be treated more flexibly.’”

Next year’s planned cuts will not take effect as it was decided that funding decisions for clinics should be based on their applications for funding for the year in question, said LAO spokesman Graeme Burk. Parkdale said in its statement that it has until the end of January to apply for legal aid funding for 2020-21.

It remains to be seen what LAO will now have to cut instead.

“Because of this legislated process, these fiscal obligations are going to need to be found elsewhere — either within the clinic system or from other service lines,” Burk said.

“This has been a difficult process for clinics and LAO and we are focused on the future. To that end, we are committed to developing new metrics and principles for funding clinics in the future. This is a priority for LAO.”

Parkdale was facing a cut of more than $1 million to be spread out over two years, while Toronto’s 13 other neighborhood legal clinics faced a combined $1-million cut to their budgets. The reductions were condemned at the time as an attack on Toronto and the advocacy work of some clinics.

LAO had argued that a number of Toronto clinics are in proximity to each other and could share services, and are more likely to be close to other social support services and public transportation options that are not available to rural and northern clinics.

“The clinic committee received additional information from clinics that has led to a variance on the approved annual funding,” Burk said. “The clinic committee had the benefit of additional time and information to re-examine the clinic funding reductions, beyond what was available in May 2019, and its funding adjustments for clinics should be viewed in that context.”

While Toronto neighbourhood clinics and Parkdale, in particular, were hit the hardest, the vast majority of Ontario’s other legal clinics, some of which specialize in areas such as children and youth and HIV/AIDS, only received 10-per-cent cuts to their “other operating costs” budget line, which includes things like equipment and office supplies.

Under current legislation, clinics can argue for a reconsideration of a funding decision before the LAO’s clinic committee, which is made up of three members of the agency’s board of directors. Two of the board members were appointed by the provincial government, while a third was appointed from a list of candidates recommended by the Law Society of Ontario, the body that regulates the legal profession.

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New legal aid legislation tabled by the Ford government last week no longer contains such stipulations for the clinic funding process, leaving it up to LAO to determine the rules.

“Moving forward, once the legislation is implemented, Legal Aid Ontario will need to work in consultation with the community clinics to develop a new funding process for community clinics,” said Lenny Abramowicz, executive director of the Association of Community Legal Clinics of Ontario.