Thunder Bay advocates for low-income people protest cuts to Legal Aid

Around 40 people took part in a rally at the Finlandia Club in Thunder Bay, Ont., on Monday to protest provincial funding cuts to Legal Aid Ontario.

The rally was spearheaded by staff of the Kinna-Aweya Legal Clinic, which is facing a 16 per cent reduction in funding retroactive to April 1.

The province announced in April that it was cutting Legal Aid funding by $133 million dollars,or about 30 per cent.

"It's so important that we work together to stop the cuts to legal aid, which will impact front line service," rally organizer Angie Lynch said in a news release announcing the event.

The clinic supports low-income people in the city, and much of its work is focused on helping clients obtain ID, access government benefits and resolve landlord-tenant disputes.

Between April 2017 and March 2018, it obtained nearly $1 million in retroactive benefits forclients and succeeded in preventing evictions in 91 per cent of the cases it was asked to intervene in, according to a document distributed at the rally by the clinic.

Tracey MacKinnon was one of the speakers at the event.

She needed Kinna-Awaya, she said, when she was transitioning from the Basic Income Pilot Project to the Ontario Disability Support Program after Ontario ended the basic income program.

"Luckily Kinna-Aweya held a free ID clinic," she said. "I needed a birth certicificate to get back on ODSP from the basic income pilot, and without that it's only $35, but it's $35 I didn't have."

Cuts to Legal Aid and other services are negatively impacting MacKinnon's mental health, she told CBC.

Darlene Necan attended the rally because she believes in funding Legal Aid and helping to make it better, even though her experience with it has been mixed, she said.

Necan lost faith in the legal system, she said, after Legal Aid failed to obtain an appeal in a case involving her son, but it is currently helping her address problems accessing social assistance.

"Getting cut off almost on a monthly basis for something you didn't do, something we didn't check off, any little wee thing, your whole life gets put on hold, and everything just becomes chaotic, almost like a desperate feeling," Necan said.

"We've got to help each other in stopping the cuts from every angle we can," she added. "I'm in the middle of all the issues that are happening here, so I'm going to come and listen and see where I could help as well."