Lawyers with HRLSC penned open letter outlining centre's decline, centre cites static public funding
Ontario’s free legal support service for individuals with human rights complaints is diverting money away from legal services and allocating it to other initiatives instead, according to a cohort of the service’s lawyers, who argue the move has drastically reduced legal support for litigants in need.
Lawyers with the Human Rights Legal Support Centre allege that the service's recent developments, which have ramped up over the past year, not only encroach on the educational mandate of another branch of Ontario’s human rights system but also reduce the HRLSC’s ability to deal with an already heavy caseload.
The reduction in resources has led to the HRLSC assisting with significantly fewer merit hearings, mediations, and settlements, the lawyers say, adding that applicants are now waiting an average of 3-5 months to speak with counsel.
“The real issue here is that we seem to have an executive who… has already started to shift us into an area in which we can't assist the most vulnerable Ontarians,” Megan Evans Maxwell, a lawyer with HRLSC, told Law Times on Tuesday. “Every Ontarian is promised direct access to justice at the [Human Rights] Tribunal,” Maxwell says.
“If applicants do not have the chance to get legal advice, to speak to a lawyer, to possibly have representation, they’re at a significant disadvantage,” Maxwell says.
However, the HLRSC told Law Times that “the central factor shaping current HRLSC service challenges is not a recent centre-induced shift from legal services to policy and education, but rather the static government funding of the centre since its inception in 2008, which has persisted across governing parties in the legislature.”
The HLRSC added that a new strategic plan for the centre, which was developed following stakeholder consultations and staff engagement, “calls for the HRLSC to be creative and innovative in our delivery of legal support services.
“The days of passively serving only those who knock on our doors are gone,” the HRLSC said.
Maxwell and another HRLSC lawyer, Emily Shepard, outlined their concerns with the centre’s direction in an open letter dated Oct. 23. The letter noted that other lawyers with the HRLSC did not add their signatures because they were concerned with job security at the centre.
The letter laid out the roles of Ontario’s three-pronged human rights system, which includes the HRLSC, which provides legal services; the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, which receives and decides human rights complaints; and the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which engages in research, education, and policy development.
Maxwell and Shepard said that over the past year, the centre’s executive and board have shifted the HRLSC’s focus to education and outreach, which they argue is already the mandate of the OHRC. However, the number of lawyers at the centre began declining back in 2014, with the centre later eliminating legal support staff roles as well.
According to the open letter, the HRLSC used the salaries they had previously been paid to departed lawyers and legal support staff members to hire non-legal staff, pay external consultants, and create a department focused on communications, outreach, and education.
The HRLSC denied that its communications and outreach initiatives duplicate the OHRC’s role, arguing that it aims to improve outreach with marginalized communities. “This is specifically about ensuring that the public is aware of and understands our distinct services and critical role in the three pillars,” the centre said. The HRLSC added that it lost an outreach and education coordinator in March due to the loss of federal grant funding. The employee had been with the centre for five years.
The centre acknowledged that it hired a researcher and a communications specialist this year, but said "both new roles are critical and instrumental to assisting us in expanding our resource base, which would in turn directly address lawyer salaries, overall staffing and service delivery.”
The centre also said that in contrast to Maxwell and Shepard’s allegation that applicants wait 3-5 months to speak with counsel, wait times at the centre are approximately over a month long.
A business plan that the HRLSC filed with the Ministry of the Attorney General for 2016 through 2019 planned for 19 staff lawyers. In contrast, the centre currently has nine lawyers on staff who work on litigation.
Tribunal Watch Ontario reported in May that the backlog of cases before the Human Rights Tribunal doubled to 9,527 over six years ending in 2023, despite the number of new applications dropping in each of the preceding three years. The watchdog group also found that the HRTO has been dismissing more human rights complaints on “jurisdictional and procedural” grounds without allowing applicants to make oral submissions at a summary hearing.
“The available data indicates that the timeliness, accessibility and quality of justice at the HRTO have diminished, not improved,” the watchdog said.
In their letter, Maxwell and Shepard said the HRLSC has had to turn away applicants with “strong claims of discrimination” because the centre lacks legal resources.
Shepard says that anecdotally, her workload before she left the HRLSC on secondment this summer “was the highest it’s ever been.” She has been with the HRLSC for eight years.
Maxwell says after Shepard left on secondment, “We are being encouraged not to take on new files and to close up files. There is a real push towards providing less legal services to applicants from the executive.”
Before publishing the letter, Shepard says she raised concerns with the centre about reducing lawyer roles and diminishing lawyer morale. Last October, the centre’s lawyers voted to unionize over salary concerns with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.
The HRLSC responded that it aims to create a better centre, but “we just never really see what they’re doing,” Maxwell says.
“It’s pretty difficult to not get an answer from your boss,” she adds. “We're not a private firm. We are publicly funded to provide one service, and when we're not able to do that, and we're being pushed away from that, it's concerning.”
The HLRSC said, “We appreciate that periods of organizational change can be difficult for some staff, but through our engagement, we have learned that many of our staff are excited by the innovative new strategies, which include growing our alternate dispute resolution capabilities.
“We will continue to engage with our staff as we have throughout the development process this past year on these important matters.”
Editor's Note: this story has been updated with additional details about an employee that the HRLSC lost this year and two employees the centre hired.
