Article: Group forms to stop potential closure of legal clinics across the Greater Toronto Area

*This article originally appeared in the Parkdale Villager.

Keep Neighbourhood Legal Clinics community group says Toronto needs smaller clinics
Parkdale Villager
By Hilary Caton

They’ve called themselves “The Keepers.”

It’s a group of nine individuals who make up the coordinating committee formed Wednesday, Oct. 15 at Scadding Court Community Centre to fight against the potential consolidation of 14 neighbourhood legal clinics across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) into three larger ones.

The working meeting was organized by the Keep Neighbourhood Legal Clinics community group, with the help of Kensington-Bellwoods Community Legal Services (KBCLS) staff Tim Maxwell and chair Gary Newhouse.

The group is fighting the GTA Legal Clinics Transformation Project Vision Report, which is suggesting the consolidation.

After a three-hour meeting that remained open only to those against the report – those who were in favour were asked politely to leave – the committee members were chosen and strategies were devised.

Marjorie Hiley, the executive director at Flemingdon Community Legal Service and a member of the steering committee who put together the report was initially at the meeting but was one of the ones asked to leave by Maxwell because she agrees with the report.

“That’s not the way to handle a sort of adversarial situation. It was unfortunate and I wasn’t going to make a big fuss,” Hiley told The Villager in an interview on Friday, Oct. 17.

“It wasn’t going to serve a purpose it would only cement the hostilities. I took the high road.”

Hiley said she came to the meeting to listen to the other side’s point of view and establish some sort of common ground.

“I wanted to know what is the alternative (they had in mind), what are we missing here? What do you feel needs to be done in order for there to be more understanding of the situation,” explained Hiley.

“It is a process and it’s an evolving process. Nothing is set in concrete.”

Collectively, the group of 20 or so concerned community members from Parkdale and the Trinity-Bellwoods area agreed that pressuring local politicians, alerting the media and arguing the report is in violation of human rights would be the best way to get the word out about the closures.

“The discussion for the Vision Report has been happening almost entirely internal to the clinics mostly by the executive directors and a few representatives of the clinic, but the people who use the clinic have largely not been informed and are not aware of this (closure),” said Oriel Varga, a member of the Stop Legal Clinics Merger who was at the meeting.

“I feel this process has been top down as opposed to what it needs to be, which is bottom up. The process is flawed and so is the outcome they’ve come up which is absolutely unacceptable.”

Varga suggested the report be scrapped altogether and have clinics approach the situation from the ground level including more open discussions and meeting with the people who use the services.

As for the report, Newhouse said clinics were duped from the get-go when representatives were asked at a series of meetings to vote on certain improvements and principles clinics could get behind, such as expanding areas of law and having multiple gateways to improve client access.

“We got sucked in because we were stupid,” Newhouse said frankly.

“The final model just appeared more or less at the end and you could see how we got sucked in because we voted on parts of the model, not knowing the end result would be to close our clinics if we wanted all of those principles.”

According to Newhouse, it is imperative other communities become aware of the risk of closure to their legal clinics and to build momentum to push for them to vote no, and it all starts with the Parkdale community.

“If Parkdale can’t swing it, then I don’t know about the other communities just because there isn’t the same level of awareness,” said Newhouse, who was also at a community meeting about this issue two weeks ago held by Parkdale Against Poverty at the Parkdale Public Library

“If there’s a community that’s strongly sending out a message (to save legal clinics), it’s Parkdale and if that community’s message isn’t going to be listened to by the Parkdale board (Parkdale Community Legal Services board), I have a hard time believing that any other community will speak out the way the Parkdale community has.”

Steve Donahgue, one of the handful of Parkdale residents at the meeting, was also at the meeting two weeks ago and said he felt compelled to do his part even though he’s never used the clinic.

“I might need to use it one day,” he said.

“I know the clinics are imperative for our neighbours, everybody needs it. And the clinic has to be local, people need to be able to get to it. To me this (Vision Report) is just a disaster and I’m going to fight it tooth and nail.”

According to Newhouse, legal clinics across the GTA have until December to decide whether they’re for or against the clinic mergers. He added that Brampton, Neighbourhood Legal Services on Queen Street East and most recently Flemingdon have all agreed to the merger.

“Brampton has endorsed it because it’s poorly underserved for such a vast geographical area. From their point of view, it’s a big improvement,” Newhouse said.

“A 33-person clinic, which is the number of staff the report suggests, is better than what they have now. It’s clear why they would endorse it.”

The same goes for York Region’s legal services, Newhouse said.

“Getting bigger (staff) is still better than getting wiped out. So of course they’d say yes, they’d be idiots not to,” he said.

“But for clinics in Toronto, it clearly doesn’t benefit any of them.”