For the past three years, a Toronto legal clinic project to help undocumented workers facing wage theft and sometimes life-changing workplace injuries has wrestled with a puzzle: how do you reach people who fear being reached?

But with just $150,000 a year to tackle the problem, the Centre for Spanish Speaking Peoples’ Buena Paga program managed to support hundreds of the city’s most vulnerable workers through legal assistance, a radio show on workplace rights, training and job fairs. The program also won workers an average of over $10,000 a month in unpaid entitlements.

While focusing on Spanish-speaking undocumented workers, Buena Paga lawyer and co-ordinator Gloria Carrasquero says the initiative aimed to help “everyone who was knocking on our door,” regardless of where they lived, their status in Canada, or their mother tongue. Now, following Legal Aid cuts announced in April, the initiative has been axed — and Carrasquero and two other members of the Buena Paga team are out of a job.

“It’s really upsetting to me that this is a program that’s being cut, when it was clearly just so effective in so many ways,” said Mary Ellen McIntyre, the CSSP’s legal clinic director.

The program started in 2016 because the Ministry of Labour noticed an uptick in complaints from Spanish-speaking workers, some of whom were undocumented, she added. The ministry provided two years-worth of funding for the clinic to create Buena Paga — which means well-paid in Spanish — and provide education about rights on the job. Legal Aid Ontario took over the funding in 2018.

Earlier this year the Ford government cut Legal Aid Ontario’s budget, previously anticipated to be $456-million, by 30 per cent. As a result, LAO is reducing funds for legal clinics by around $14.5 million this year.

Undocumented workers are entitled to protection by provincial labour laws and the workers’ compensation system, but “most undocumented workers believe they have no rights at all, they have no protection at all,” said Daniel Rippes, a lawyer with the CSSP’s legal clinic.

“You would be surprised that even some government agencies do not know that they are entitled to basic entitlements.”

In addition to running a weekly radio program providing information on workers rights, the program offered twice weekly workshops and operated a dedicated phone line for workers to call with employment issues. It also hosted monthly “coffee house” sessions that combined music and entertainment with education about workplace protections, attended by around 100 workers every month.

Buena Paga’s legal work has also helped enforce basic rights for workers, some of whom are undocumented. Others do not speak enough English to navigate the legal system alone.

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One worker, who the Star is not naming because his settlement is subject to a nondisclosure agreement, said he worked for a construction company for over a decade, working 10 hours a day, six days a week. But when he turned 60, his boss started pressuring him to retire — giving him paperwork to sign that he did not understand and at one point became physically aggressive with the worker. With Buena Paga’s help, the worker was able to win several thousand dollars in a wrongful dismissal case.

“I was working good, I loved my job,” said the worker, who is originally from Ecuador where he trained as an architect. “(My boss) trusted me. He changed because I’m old.”

It is difficult to estimate the number of undocumented workers in Toronto, but nationwide the figure has been placed anywhere between 200,000 to 500,000. Around half are believed to live in the Greater Toronto Area, often working in the construction and cleaning sectors. In 2013, the City of Toronto declared itself a Sanctuary City after noting while undocumented workers “contribute to the Canadian economy by paying for basic needs of shelter, food and other services, as well as paying provincial sales tax,” they often face “multiple barriers to living healthy fulfilling lives.”

“They are particularly susceptible to situations where they are required to work for low wages, under poor and unsafe work conditions, and where they have no protection against unfair dismissal, abuse and/or exploitation by their employer,” says a staff report from the time.

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The city’s policy means Toronto residents can access most municipal services without providing information about their immigration status. But a 2017 report by the Ryerson Centre for Immigration and Settlement found these measures had not been “effectively implemented” due to inadequate front line training and poor outreach to relevant communities.

That, said Carrasquero, is what made Buena Paga so unique.

“(Workers) don’t have any other place where they can find this information,” she said.

“The Buena Paga team have proven that they are able to reach the most vulnerable members of their own racialized communities; workers that non-LatinX legal staff at other clinics had not previously been able to access,” said the CSSP’s background report on the project from July.

Although Legal Aid Ontario approved Buena Paga’s funding late last year, the money was dispersed through a partner legal clinic, the Workers’ Health and Safety Legal Clinic (WHSLC), which LAO hit with a $240,000 cut to its budget — resulting in the elimination of Buena Paga.

In response to questions from the Star, LAO spokesperson Graeme Burk said while the organization cut WHSLC’s budget, it “did not specifically reduce funding for the Buena Paga initiative.”

“Rather, the decision to end the Buena Paga program was made by the board of the WHSLC,” he said, adding that clinics’ board of directors are “responsible for determining the legal needs of individuals and communities.”

On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a one-time $26.8 million top up for LAO to handle refugee and immigration cases. McIntyre says the funding boost is unlikely to save Buena Paga.

In addition to helping workers, McIntyre says the program was about shifting culture in a shadow economy where some employers deliberately hire undocumented workers because “screwing them” is easier.

“To me, one of the biggest successes of the program that (Rippes) has got employers phoning him up saying, ‘I want to do the right thing.’ Obviously we can’t advise employers, but we can dialogue. And that is culture,” she said.

McIntyre said she is still hopeful that organizations in the city will step up to rescue the program. Gustavo Vega, who won $1,600 in unpaid termination pay because of Buena Paga’s assistance, said he hopes so too — adding that he used some of his own settlement money to make a donation to the program.

“The money is really important because I am a low-income person,” he said. “But the main thing was that I was able to fight for my rights.”