Thank you.
Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm here on behalf of the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic. I should mention that I'm also a bencher of the law society. The law society has struck a working group on legal aid, studying this very important issue, as we recognize that this is a critical issue that challenges all of us.
As I mentioned in my report, the clinic is a not-for-profit organization that provides free legal services to low-income members of the Chinese and Southeast Asian communities in the greater Toronto area. We provide a wide range of services in different areas of law, including immigration, employment, social assistance, housing, human rights, tax law, charter litigation, and anything that our clients need.
We were established in 1987. We're one of 76 community legal clinics in Ontario. Many clients served by our clinic face barriers in accessing the justice system, not only because they are poor but also because of their race, their immigration status, as well as the lack of linguistically and culturally responsive services in the justice system in general. All of those issues are compounded by the chronic underfunding of legal aid programs by both the federal and provincial governments.
A significant portion of our clients are individuals with complex legal needs, including people with mental health issues, immigrant and refugee women fleeing domestic violence or living in domestic violence situations, and non-status immigrants working in precarious job situations. Recognizing that the legal system often serves to perpetuate the disadvantages faced by marginalized communities, legal clinics like ours must engage effectively in advocacy work to address the underlying and systemic inequalities in our society and the inequalities faced by our communities, including racialized and immigrant, which are plenty. They experience higher unemployment rates, earn lower income, and are more likely to live in poverty, and as such, they are more likely to be homeless or in near homeless situations. Racialized community members face systemic racism in the criminal justice system and the justice system in general and are more likely to be overrepresented in the correctional system.
For all these reasons and more, access to justice, including access to legal aid and the fair representation in the courts and tribunal system are all important issues for these communities. Community legal clinics play a critical role in promoting access to justice. Clinics that serve specific ethno-racial groups, like ours, are keys to promoting access to justice for racialized communities.
However, a community legal clinic system can only succeed if it is part of a well-funded legal aid program that also supports the judicare system as well as duty counsel services in the courts and tribunals. Notwithstanding the recent increase to legal aid funding in Ontario, access to justice for most vulnerable individuals is still woefully inadequate. This is particularly true in family law, refugee law, and other civil law areas.
In Ontario, there is currently a funding crisis due to the deficit for refugee law certificates. Although legal aid expenses in refugee law cases have gone up from $17.6 million in 2013 to $22 million last year, the federal contribution has stayed the same at $7 million. We've heard about the drop in federal contributions in the criminal law area.
In attempting to address the funding crisis, Legal Aid Ontario has decided to claw back funding to legal clinics, which has affected our services as well. Given the ongoing challenges facing racialized communities and other marginalized groups in pursuing access to justice, in our paper we have made a number of recommendations. I'm going to highlight a few of them.
Number one, significantly increase the federal government's contribution to legal aid programs, and a significant portion of those increases must be earmarked for civil law and poverty law services.
Number two, adopt a racial equity impact analysis to examine and evaluate all laws and policies at the federal level to minimize, if not eliminate, the adverse impact of such laws and policies on racialized groups.
Number three, work with provinces and territories to create their own court challenges programs.
Number four, work with provinces and territories to develop a centrally accredited interpretation and translation service for all courts and tribunals.
Number five, develop a national access to justice strategy in tandem with the national poverty reduction strategy, based on social determinants of health, that recognizes the particular vulnerability of marginalized groups on the basis of race, gender, disability, and so on.
I know there is a suggestion about creating national benchmarks. We have some comments on that in our paper. I will make just one comment here. If you decide to develop a national legal aid benchmark, then one key suggestion that I would have is that these benchmarks not be set at a standard lower than what currently exists in Ontario, because Ontario has the best legal aid program in Canada.
In conclusion, an adequately funded legal aid program remains the key solution to promoting access to justice. As mentioned, rule of law is foundational to our constitution, and so is respect for minority rights. There is no rule of law if individuals are unable to recognize and enforce their legal rights due to a lack of legal representation. As for respect for minority rights, that rings hollow if racialized group members and other marginalized members continue to be left to their own devices when they appear before the courts and tribunals. The need to address this issue rests on all of our shoulders.
Thank you very much.