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POLITICIANS GONNA POLITIC – Vulnerable immigrants and refugees gonna suffer.

Posted bywpengine 25 August 2019

Michael Spratt analyses the aftermath of Ontario’s Legal Aid funding cuts

Source: When Legal Aid is a political prop, Access to justice suffers

Posted bywpengine25 August 2019Posted inUncategorized

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Janayre Marie Smith Vaughan
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STUDENT RUN LEGAL CLINICS PROVIDE IMPORTANT SERVICES – “Law school clinics not only provide legal services to those who cannot otherwise afford them — a feat in its own rite given that clinic workers help tenants keep their homes, workers keep their jobs and parents keep their children. They are also key hubs for experiential learning, especially in areas where the access to justice crisis in Ontario has become most dire, such as housing and immigration. For law students across the province, an attack on our clinics is an attack on our future.”

Recent Posts

  • Credit also has to be given to JAMES LOCKYER for his tireless advocacy over many years to bring this to fruition.
  • Lawyers in England are refusing to represent some people because their legal aid system is insufficient to maintain a viable practice. The legal aid system in Ontario is similarly perpetually on the brink.
  • Since 1982 accused persons have had the right to a trial within a reasonable time. We’ve had the Askov, Morin and now the Jordan cases of the Supreme Court of Canada trying to ensure that right, with only limited success. So now the courts are stacking cases on top of other cases on their daily trial lists that have no possibility of being reached for trial on that date.
  • JUSTICE DELAYED IS JUSTICE DENIED – Every person charged with a criminal offence has the constitutional right to have their trial held within a reasonable time. Our Supreme Court has twice attempted to define what is reasonable through the cases of Askov and Jordan. The result has been decades of hundreds of cases being “stayed” from proceeding due to delay and further delays caused by the complex application procedures required to assert that right. Nothing has changed. Simply demanding that the trial process proceed expeditiously doesn’t work.
  • WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR BAIL SYSTEM? – The federal government enacts the criminal code. The province applies it. The province builds and owns the courts. The province hires the Judges, the Justices of the Peace, the Crown Attorneys and court staff.
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