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he Supreme Court rendered an historic decision (Kanthasamy v. Canada) on December 10, 2015 clarifying how immigration officers should decide applications for humanitarian and compassionate (H&C) consideration. Many refugees and vulnerable migrants must rely on H&C provisions in order to remain in Canada or to be reunited with family members.
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Six legal clinics in Toronto launched a new initiative on December 4, 2015, to provide employment law services to low-income residents in the east end of the City of Toronto. The launch event for the Toronto East Employment Law Services (“TEELS”) was held at Flemingdon Community Legal Services, 1 Leaside Park Drive in Toronto. The event was well attended, including by Primier Kathleen Wynne, Minister Michael Coteau and MPP Arthur Potts. Attendees heard precarious workers speak about the many challenges they face, including the story of a worker who had not been paid by her employer for over ten months.
By Jennifer Stone, Staff Lawyer
(Click here to download a .pdf version of this article) This month the Toronto Children’s Aid Society (CAS) and others issued a Report[1] revealing Toronto’s child poverty rate is the highest in Canada at almost 29%. As in the CAS’s similar report last year, “children of colour, Indigenous children, children from single-parent or newcomer families, and children with disabilities are more likely to experience poverty in Toronto.” Regent Park has the highest child poverty rate in the country, at an alarming 63%.[2] By Shibil Siddiqi
This post was originally published by Legal Aid Ontario as part of the Personal perspectives on access to justice series. Access to justice Traditionally access to justice has been seen as providing access to dispute resolution tools, including effective access to courts and tribunals. No one should have to lose their liberty, family, residency status, home or source of income without a fair shot at due process. With dispute resolution effective access is key, and necessarily includes the provision of competent legal services to ensure that parties to a dispute can navigate the technical requirements and barriers established by a formal dispute resolution mechanism such as the justice system. On April 4, 1985, the Supreme Court of Canada handed down its landmark decision in the case of Singh v. Minister of Employment and Immigration [1985] 1 SCR 177. This case recognized a duty of fairness owed to refugee claimants in Canada in determining their refugee claims. To celebrate the 30th Anniversary of this internationally renowned decision, our immigration lawyer Jennifer Stone recently spoke at an event on behalf of the Canadian Council for Refugees. The following are Jennie's speaking notes from the event, discussing the continuing importance of the Singh case in light of her refugee-protection work in Hong Kong, as well as her work on the upcoming appeal in Kanthsamy v. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. The case will be heard by the Supreme Court on Thursday, April 16. Jennie will appear before the Supreme Court as co-counsel for the Canadian Council for Refugees, an intervener in the case. The case calls upon the Supreme Court to clarify the scope of humanitarian and compassionate grounds and considerations in the immigration context.
Legal clinics are looking at how we can improve our services. We believe we can give clients more service, more access to justice and provide it closer to home.
Here are some of our main ideas:
Court Divided on Charter Right to Housing, Claimants Will Appeal
(Toronto) - Today, the Ontario Court of Appeal released a divided ruling to homeless and inadequately housed Canadians in a landmark Charter challenge against the federal and provincial governments. In a strong dissent, Justice Kathryn Feldman, the most experienced judge on the panel, found that the application raises serious Charter claims of significant public importance.
This blog post is reproduced here with the kind permission of The Homeless Hub. You can read the original post here
People who are homeless are not a distinct and separate population. In fact the line between being homeless and not being homeless is quite fluid. In general, the pathways into and out of homelessness are neither linear nor uniform.
The GTA Legal Clinics’ Transformation Project has released its Vision Report: a report that spells out how geographically based community legal clinics in the GTA can be reorganized to provide more and better services to our client community.
 The following submission was co-authored by NLS lawyer Jennifer Stone. The introduction to the document is produced below. The entire submission is available in .pdf format.
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"Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice"
- Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)
- Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)
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