Legal Clinics and Legal System

: Despite a caseload that rises every year, the clinic annual grant from the province has remained at about $640,000 ever since it got permanent government funding in 2007, according to Toronto Star. Ontario plans to inject an extra $94 million into the legal aid system over the next three years, but legal clinics like SALCO that are designed to serve the linguistic and cultural needs of specific ethnocultural communities are concerned about how it will be allocated among the province 76 clinics. The tiny clinic, based in North York, now runs eight satellite locations in Brampton, Mississauga, Scarborough, Markham and Newmarket to meet the specialized needs of clients of South Asian origin, many of them newcomers to Canada. Legal clinics are expected to get just one-fifth of the pie, with the rest going to private lawyers paid through legal aid certificates, and duty counsels deployed at local courts. One model being floated by Legal Aid Ontario would base funding on the poverty rate of the population served within the geographical boundaries of a community legal clinic. Three of these ethnocultural clinics — SALCO, the Metro Toronto Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, and African Canadian Legal Clinic — are worried they’ll be left out in the cold as the system gets its first funding boost since 2001. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.