Legal Aid in Ontario assists people on low-incomes to get legal help, representation and telephone and online support. Legal aid in Ontario is available to immigrants facing a hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board, tenants facing hearings with the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board, victims of domestic violence, those people who have been charged with criminal offence and cannot afford a lawyer and those families involved in child custody disputes. Unfortunately civil representations have been cut from the Ontario Legal Aid roster of services.
One of the tools to make access to Legal Aid in Ontario easier is the new toll-free hotline, but this has met with sharp criticism that the service offered is ineffective with long wait times and poor access. The idea behind the phone service was to cut the number of Legal Aid application offices in the province but many clinic lawyers believe that moving from direct consultation to phone services will negatively affect the traditional client-lawyer relationship.
David McKillop, Vice President of Legal Aid Ontario (LAO) admitted that the LAO call centre needed more staff and that a plan was in place to recruit more call center agents. LAO had been caught out by experiencing a higher than expected demand for the toll free phone service. Additionally, French speakers experienced waits of up to one hour because the call centre did not have enough bilingual staff.
LAO has experienced huge increases in the number of people calling for certificate services and its online application portal has helped to cope with some of the demand. Calls for certificate services come predominantly from citizens living outside of Toronto who found it difficult to get to a legal aid office. Nevertheless critics of legal aid in Ontario maintain that the new phone line does not adequately serve poorer and disadvantaged sections of society; they maintain that these people need one to one consultations. David McKillop stresses that face to face representation will be available to those people who need it and that the phone service is there to compliment not replace the traditional legal aid processes.
