Category Archives: News

ACCESS DENIED: Calling for the Revocation of Canada’s Refugee Status Document Requirement for Private Sponsorship

News

In 2012, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) amended the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations (IRPR). Under Section 135 of the IRPR, refugee status is a requirement of sponsorship under the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program (PSRP). Refugee status must be obtained from either the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or from the government of an applicant’s current residence.

Section 135 has created significant barriers to refugee sponsorship, especially during the Afghan refugee crisis. Since many Afghan refugees face difficulties obtaining refugee status, s.35 has severely protracted the urgent relocation of Afghan refugees. Indeed, despite committing to accept 40,000 Afghan refugees, Canada has only accepted 4,000. This is all despite the fact that many Afghan refugees meet the UN Refugee Convention definition of refugees, having faced over 40 years of conflicts, poverty, and diseases that were exasperated by the U.S. invasion and the recent takeover by the Taliban.

In response to this situation, DLS has published a paper titled “Access Denied: Calling for Revocation of Canada’s Refugee Status Document Requirement for Private Sponsorship”. The paper analyzes the sponsorship requirement and identifies the difficulties it causes for refugees applying under the PSRP, with specific focus on the barriers s. 135 has created to Afghan resettlement in Canada. It argues that the status requirement impedes Canada’s proper response to the Afghan crisis and recommends that the status requirement be lifted.

To promote the paper and raise awareness of the issues surrounding s. 135 of the IRPR, DLS held a virtual conference titled “Access Denied: Ongoing Barriers to Refugee Sponsorship in Canada”. The conference had speakers such as Tamana Hafid, a member of the Canadian Afghan Lawyers Association, and Mellissa Fung, a Canadian journalist, filmmaker, and storyteller discussing the issues the status requirement causes for Afghan refugees and their experience in helping them overcome the requirement. The conference had over 200 participants.

UNHCR-Status-Afghan-Refugee-Crises-ResponseDownload

Chasing New Fees: Is FDM Charging You a Fee for Training?

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In March 2021, the Ontario Labour Relations Board (the Board) ruled that FDM Group, could not charge their former employees a $30,000 fee arising from job-training costs for ending their contract during the two-year commitment period. The Board found that the $30,000 charge constituted a fee within the meaning of the Employment Standards Act, which prohibits temporary help agencies from charging workers a fee in connection with them becoming an employee of the agency and in connection with them being assigned work through the agency. The Board held that charge was illegal and ordered FDM to remove provisions enforcing the fee from its agreements.  

The four former FDM employees represented by Parkdale Community legal Services (PCLS) and Downtown Legal Services (DLS) were happy with this victory, not only for themselves, but for other workers at FDM and temporary help agencies. 

If only that was the end of the story. 

PCLS and DLS have heard from recent employees of FDM that their current contracts, contain a similar prohibited fee, in direct contradiction of the Board’s order.  

This cannot continue.  

If you are/were an employee of FDM (or another temporary help agency) whose contract contains a prohibited fee for training, PCLS and DLS want to hear from you. See PCLS and DLS contact information below: 

Jennifer Fehr 
Supervising Lawyer, Employment Law Division 
Downtown Legal Services 
jennifer.fehr@utoronto.ca, (416)934-4535  

John No 
Staff Lawyer, Workers’ Rights Division 
Parkdale Community Legal Services 
noj@lao.on.ca, (416) 531-2411, ext. 227 

Media Release: Temporary Agency’s $30,000 Charge Against Workers Who End Their Employment Deemed Illegal by Ontario Labour Relations Boar

News

The Ontario Labour Relations Board ruled in a March 12, 2021 decision that temporary work agencies cannot charge its workers a fee when they end their work assignments.

The decision involved four former temporary workers from FDM Group, a multi-national temporary work agency, who left their assignments arranged through FDM before the conclusion of a two-year commitment period.

Under FDM’s employment agreement, workers who end their employment contract before completing their commitment period are liable for $30,000 in damages arising from job-training costs incurred by FDM.

Under the Employment Standards Act, temporary work agencies are prohibited from charging workers a fee in connection with them becoming an employee of the agency and in connection with them being assigned work through the agency.

“In addition to being an unconscionable provision in an employment agreement, FDM’s enforcement of the $30,000 charge is in clear violation of the Employment Standards Act,” said John No, staff lawyer with Parkdale Community Legal Services, which represented three of the workers. “If temporary work agencies want to find ways to retain employees, they should be doing so by maintaining proper working conditions and not by bonding them with a threat of a penalty.”

The Board agreed with the workers and found that FDM’s $30,000 charge constituted a fee within the meaning of the Employment Standards Act and the manner in which FDM sought to enforce the charge was clearly prohibited by the Act. As a result, the Board held that charge was illegal and ordered FDM to remove provisions enforcing the fee from its employment agreements.

The decision is a monumental win not only for FDM employees, but also for temporary agency workers across the province, many of whom are low-wage workers, recent university graduates, and newcomers to Canada. Downtown Legal Services, who represented one of the workers in the FDM case, called the Board’s decision “a step in the right direction,” particularly for vulnerable groups who seek employment through agencies like FDM.

No commended the four workers for their willingness to participate in the case and fight FDM’s fee. “Had we lost, it would have been easier for FDM to enforce the fee against them,” he stated. “Instead, they decided to take the risk and fight to protect the rights of temporary workers.”

Eduardo Guzman-Diaz, one of the workers involved in the case, was extremely pleased with the outcome. “I’m very excited and relieved to have received the Board’s decision,” Guzman-Diaz said. “This decision not only impacts myself and the three others involved in the case, but also all FDM workers. So many people have reached out to me saying that they have been afraid to end their contracts with FDM. I hope this decision also brings them some relief.”

Unfortunately, FDM’s public statements after the decision gives doubt as to whether FDM will fully abandon its attempts to seek money from its employees. PCLS and DLS call on the Ministry of Labour to ensure that FDM has removed any iterations of the illegal damages clause from its employment agreements and that it will comply with the Board’s decision on a going forward basis.

The full decision can be found online here.

For more information contact:

John No
Staff Lawyer, Workers’ Rights Division
Parkdale Community Legal Services
noj@lao.on.ca, (416) 531-2411, ext. 227

Jennifer Fehr
Supervising Lawyer, Employment Law Division
Downtown Legal Services
jennifer.fehr@utoronto.ca, (416)934-4535

Final Exams are Here! Tips for Avoiding Academic Offences in a Remote Setting

News

The information contained here is taken from the University of Toronto Academic Integrity Website, the University of Toronto Missisauga Academic Integrity Website, and the Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters.

 

What constitutes an academic offence during a remote exam?

Generally, submitting someone else’s work as your own, receiving help from someone else and/or helping someone else with their exam can all constitute academic offences. Sharing exam questions through online platforms or social media can also constitute an offence. Accessing aids like cheat sheets or online search engines are other examples of common remote academic offences.

Some Examples Include:

 Accessing an exam cheat sheet while writing your exam

 Searching Google, Reddit, or other platforms for help

 Posting an exam question on Reddit or Twitter

 Sharing and discussing exam questions through a chat app like Facebook messenger

 Submitting an answer from Easy Edu or Chegg

 Selling your exam or essay answers to other students

Even for open-book exams, always double-check with your professor what resources are acceptable. An open-book exam does not mean you are free to use any resource you want.

For more on unauthorized aids, see our post on unauthorized aids.

 

I’ve been accused of an academic offence, now what?

The information contained here is taken from the Academic Integrity Website’s Process and Procedures page. For a visual representation of the process, click here.

Professor’s Meeting

You will have an opportunity to discuss the accusation with your professor. You do not have the right to counsel at this meeting, but nothing you say can be used against you at a Tribunal Hearing (if the matter gets to that point).

Two important notes about professor’s meetings:

 If the professor believes an academic offence has occurred after meeting you and the assignment/exam is worth more than 10% of your grade, the professor has no choice but to report the offence. The matter will then proceed to a meeting with the Dean (or his/her Designate).

 Ignorance is no excuse! Even if you didn’t know what you did was an offence, the professor must report it.

Dean’s Meeting

At this stage, you will meet with the Dean’s Designate to discuss the allegations. At this point you do have a right to counsel. There are generally three outcomes to the Dean’s Meeting:

1. The Dean’s Designate may decide there was no academic offence and dismiss the matter.

2. If the Dean’s Designate believes there was an academic offence and you admit the offence, the Dean’s Designate may sanction you. If they believe your offence was serious enough to require a suspension longer than a year, they will decline to sanction you themselves and refer the matter to the Provost to lay charges against you.

3. If the Dean’s Designate believes there was an academic offence and you do not admit the offence, they will refer the matter to the Provost to lay charges against you.

Tribunal Hearing

If the Provost lays charges against you, you will have your matter heard before a tribunal comprised of a lawyer, a professor, and a student. For more information about tribunal hearings, see the Office of Appeals, Discipline and Faculty Grievances Academic Discipline website.

Penalties

Sanctions imposed can range from a reprimand, to a reduction in your grade in the class, to a suspension from the University up to 5 years, to expulsion. Most sanctions will also involve a notation on your transcript.

For a non-exhaustive list of potential penalties that the University may impose for an academic offence, see here.

 

Can Downtown Legal Services (DLS) help?

If your matter has been referred to a Dean’s Meeting or a Tribunal Hearing, DLS may be able to provide you legal advice and representation.

DLS is a free legal aid clinic staffed by University of Toronto law students supervised by trained and experienced staff lawyers.

DLS services are available to any University of Toronto students who have not opted out of paying the DLS student levy. To determine if you’ve paid the DLS student levy, check your Tuition Invoice on ACORN. Look for an incidental fee for Downtown Legal Services.

 

How can I request DLS’ assistance?

To request assistance, call our intake line at (416) 978-6447. An intake operator will ask you a series of questions to determine if we can assist you.

Please note that whether we are able to assist you will depend on whether clinic students have availability to take on new files.

COVID-19 Update

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Downtown Legal Services will be closed to members of the public during the City of Toronto lock-down (beginning November 23, 2020). If you require legal assistance, please call our intake line at 416-978-6447.

COVID-19 Precautions

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Downtown Legal Services is open to members of the public by appointment only. Support staff will be on site and available to receive service of documents only on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Everyone entering Downtown Legal Services is required to wear a mask. Clients will need to wear a mask during appointments or when dropping off items. This policy also applies to vendors, suppliers, and contractors.

COVID-19 may be spread by people who do not have any symptoms. This is why we are asking you to wear a mask.

If you feel ill, have been in close contact with someone who is sick or has confirmed COVID-19 in the past 14 days, or have returned from travel outside Canada in the past 14 days, please do not come to the clinic.

Black & Indigenous Lives Matter

News

DLS stands in solidarity with the Black community and protestors around the world in raising our voices against anti-Black racism and police brutality.  The murder of George Floyd and the suspicious death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet are the latest in devastatingly long list of Black people’s lives that have been damaged and extinguished by police and other state actors.  These actions are not just the random acts of individual perpetrators, rather they are the product of and enabled by centuries of systemic oppression and institutional racism. 

We acknowledge the role of law as a tool of state oppression and control.  As a legal clinic and law school program, we recognise that we have much work to do internally to identify and confront how unconscious bias and racism shape the ways in which we think about, teach and practice law.  We accept and welcome the difficult conversations this commitment brings, for it is through these discussions that we will be challenged to do better.

In our work, we see daily the differential impact of the law on our clients – particularly racialized clients.  We will work to strengthen our relationships with key community agencies and advocacy groups to better under the gaps in service for Black and Indigenous people and to create stronger pathways for directed referrals.

As a part of the broader University of Toronto community, DLS is bound by the University’s Statement on Equity, Diversity and Excellence.  We strive to create an inclusive, welcoming environment for our staff, students and our clients.  We understand that a critical piece of this commitment is valuing and promoting diversity within DLS and are committed to prioritizing diversity in future hiring processes. 

We understand that it is our responsibility to educate ourselves on anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism.  We are profoundly grateful for the leadership and commitment of so many valued community partners for sharing their wisdom, knowledge, and expertise.  Their voices, not ours, should be at the forefront of this conversation.  We encourage you to visit their websites and support their work.

Aboriginal Legal Services

Black Legal Action Centre

Black Lives Matter Toronto

Black Health Alliance

 

 

Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) is Unconstitutional, says the Federal Court of Canada in Landmark Decision

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Yesterday, Madam Justice McDonald, of the Federal Court of Canada (FC), released her decision declaring the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) between Canada and the US unconstitutional. This means that refugees who cross at land Points of Entry from the US to Canada cannot be returned to the US, where they risk being imprisoned.

This is a very important decision for refugees. The decision acknowledges that refugees who are returned to the US from the Canadian border are subject to unconstitutional violations of their rights. Imprisonment for having an ineligible refugee claim, without being heard, is traumatic and goes against the objective and spirit of the STCA. This acknowledgement is essentially a decision that the US is unsafe for many refugees. This opens the door for refuges to seek asylum in Canada when their safety is threatened in the US.  Downtown Legal Services represents Nedira Mustefa, ABC, DE and FG, four of the individual clients in the STCA challenge.  We congratulate our clients for their courage and bravery in bringing this challenge. 

Overview of Conclusion

The FC found that the STCA is invalid. Specifically, section 101(1)(e) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) and section 159.3 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations (Regulations), referred to as the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), are unconstitutional. These sections are of no force or effect as they violate s. 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the Charter) and are not saved by s. 1 of the Charter. The Government of Canada has 6 months to address the Court’s concerns.

Summary of the Decision

The Justice introduced the six issues in front of her, the core issues being (1) whether the STCA was outside of the enacting bodies’ jurisdiction (whether the STCA was ultra vires), (2) whether the STCA violates s. 7 of the Charter, if yes, (3) whether it is saved by s. 1, and (4) whether the STCA violates s. 15 of the Charter.

Justice McDonald relies on the Federal Court of Appeal (FCA) decision from 2008 in Canadian Council for Refugees v. Her Majesty the Queen as a full answer to the jurisdictional issue. Justice McDonald agreed with the decision from 2008 that jurisdictional issues cannot be raised on the basis of developing events or facts that occurred after the STCA came into force.  Ultimately, Justice McDonald found the legal arguments aimed at the same provisions as determined by the FCA in 2008 have been framed differently but have not changed in substance and she sees no ground to depart from the binding authority of the 2008 decision.

At this point, Justice McDonald began her s. 7 Charter analysis. Her conclusions herein are the landmark change in the law. Justice McDonald found that the STCA provision violates the liberty rights and security of the person interests enshrined in s. 7 of the Charter. Justice McDonald also found the STCA provision  overbroad and grossly disproportionate to its legislative objective. She then found this s. 7 violation cannot be saved by s. 1 of the Charter. In other words, the STCA is unconstitutional and invalid law.

In reaching her decision, she relied heavily on the testimonies of DLS clients Nedira Mustefa and ABC to conclude that the inevitable imprisonment and horrendous treatment in the US upon return, as well as the heightened risk of refoulement (return) to dangerous countries of origin, causes significant psychological and physical harms. These harms, which are a direct result of the Canadian decision to return claimants to the US, threaten the applicants’ rights to liberty and security of the person. Justice McDonald found the STCA to be overbroad as the resulting deprivation of liberty has no connection to the legislative objective of “sharing of responsibility”. She then determined the impacts on returned claimants to be grossly disproportional to the administrative benefits of the STCA.

Finally, in finding the violation of s. 7 not to be saved by s. 1 of the Charter, Justice McDonald rejects that there is a pressing and substantial purpose for the STCA, finding it difficult to reconcile why some claimants are turned away at the border and others who fit in STCA exceptions can cross. Minimal impairment is not met, as there is no fair review process and claimants face imprisonment and related consequences upon arrival to the US. Lastly, the deleterious effects of detention and threats to security of the person are not proportional to the salutary effects of administrative efficiency.

Having found a violation of s. 7 rights, Justice McDonald did not deal with the section 15 equality arguments raised by the Applicants. The Applicants argued that changes to US asylum law increase the risk of refoulement of STCA claimants returned to the US who claim discrimination under the category “particular social group”. The Applicants further argued that the one-year bar on claiming asylum in the US disproportionately affects women due to the nature of the claims and the social norms in their countries of origin.

To the final issue on the Respondents’ argument that Ms. Mustefa did not have “clean hands”, Justice McDonald is clear: “I do not find that she intended to deceive the CBSA Officer or that she engaged in serious misconduct. Furthermore, there was no finding of misconduct on the part of the CBSA. Accordingly, I accept her evidence.” Either way, Justice McDonald allowed Ms. Mustefa’s judicial review application on the basis of the violation of s. 7 of the Charter.

This decision comes after years of legal advocacy and uncertainty for the individual litigants and all those impacted by the STCA. The Federal Court previously ruled in 2007 that the STCA was unconstitutional, based on gaping deficiencies in the US asylum system. Now, having taken into account the indisputable evidence of our clients’ lived experiences, Justice McDonald’s decision provides a clear reaffirmation that the US is not a safe country and Canada returning claimants to the US violates their human and Charter-protected rights.  

Read the Full Decision

Press contacts:

Prasanna Balasundaram, Staff Lawyer Refugee and Immigration Division, p.balasundaram@utoronto.ca, 647-210-0176­­­

To learn more:

CBC News 

Reuters 

The Guardian 

Footnote (Preliminary Issues):

Justice McDonald’s began the decision by addressing two preliminary issues. She first affirmed her decision from the February 21, 2019 motion to accept the expert evidence of Deborah Anker and Karen Musalo. Anker and Musalo’s personal views and external advocacy were found not to affect their ability to give expert evidence in these cases. Justice McDonald then denied the request for the late addition of new procedural fairness arguments raised on behalf of Nedira Mustefa. She determined it unfair to the Respondents and not in the interest of justice to allow the request.

Separated Uyghur-Canadian Families: Canada must bring them home

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Khalil Mamut’s dream is to be reunited with his three young children.[/caption]

Imagine escaping from a home where you do not feel safe, just to be captured and sent to a horrifying prison. There, you live in pain, and people accuse you of crimes you have not committed. Years later, you are freed and your name is cleared – but you now have no home. No country will welcome you in; no country will grant you asylum. Finally, one country opens its doors to you, but it is not a home. Your heart lies with your family halfway across the world. But, they will not let you in to reunite with your family. You have been separated for over a decade. You are kept apart from your children; you miss first words, first steps, and first days of school. They are growing up without a father only because their country fails to recognize the absurdity of your case and grant you the status you need to reunite with your family, to reunite with your children. 

This is the story of the three men.

Ayub Mohammed, Salahidin Abdulahad, and Khalil Mamut are three Uyghur men who left China after childhoods of discrimination, persecution, and hopelessness. They travelled to Pakistan, and then Afghanistan, in search of a new home. Before their dreams could be realized, Ayub, Salahidin, and Khalil were taken with nineteen other Uyghur migrants into American custody, shipped to Guantanamo Bay due to unsubstantiated claims that they were part of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) – an alleged terrorist organization that China convinced the United States to target. This led to over five years of detention in Guantanamo Bay, where they were aggressively and repeatedly interrogated. They were exonerated as early as 2003, and yet were kept in detention and isolation for several more years.Salahidin Abdulahad’s children desperately await their father’s return.[/caption]

The US finally released the men from Guantanamo Bay, but refused to let them enter the States. Instead, the men were sent all over the world to countries that would accept them, without any say in where they would end up. Ayub is now in Albania, and Salahidin and Khalil in Bermuda, but their families are here in Canada; their kids growing up without their fathers. Downtown Legal Services is launching a campaign, aiming to bring to light the absurdity and inhumanity of their cases, revealing the continued pain and limbo that the Canadian immigration system has put on them. Posing no threat to Canadian national security, these men have been waiting over five years to reunite with their families and find a safe place to land.

They must be brought home. 

Uyghur Persecution: The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim Turkic ethnic minority group native to Xinjiang, China, that are persecuted by the Chinese government.  In 2018, a UN human rights panel reported than 1 million ethnic Uyghurs were detained in “re-education camps”, where detainees are forced to denounce their faith, learn Mandarin, study Chinese propaganda and chant Chinese slogans in prison-like facilities. Former inmates have reported punishments such as waterboarding, handcuffing and being strapped to “tiger-chairs” for those who fail to follow. Detainees have also reported brainwashing, widespread sexual abuse and forced compulsory sterilization within these camps. 

Guantanamo Bay:  All 22 Uyghur men who were detained at Guantanamo Bay Detention Center were cleared of “enemy combatant” status as early as 2003. Yet, the last of the Uyghur men were released from the detention center in 2014. For more information on the Uyghur men detained in Guantanamo watch “Uyghurs: Prisoners of the Absurd” (NFB documentary).

The three men’s stories have been covered by the Star. For more details on their legal case, please visit this website. To support the men’s fight to reunite with their families, sign this petition. 

Report from the 2019 Conference of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness

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DLS housing lawyer Benjamin Ries was a panelist at the annual conference of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness in Edmonton, AB from November 4-6, 2019. This is his blog entry.

Approximately 1500 conference attendees from all levels of government, academia, social housing agencies, and the non-profit service sector gathered in Edmonton this year to discuss their latest research, ideas, and experiences in the national fight against homelessness and inadequate housing. Despite all of the positive energy that infused the conference plenary sessions, I came away with the distinct feeling that the majority of the institutions represented do not even have an imagination for what it will take to realize the right to housing in Canada.

This year’s conference featured a series of excellent plenary keynotes, particularly by Grand Chief Wilton Littlechild, Cindy Blackstock, and Sandy Buchman. In particular, Dr. Blackstock’s presentation should have left few audience members in doubt about some very basic political facts:

  1. Eliminating unequal levels of poverty in compliance with basic human rights law costs public money
  2. Even when a self-identified “progressive” government knows how much money it will cost to uphold equality rights (e.g. of indigenous children), the government may resist spending it
  3. Litigation (supported by social activism) may be the only way to hold government accountable for this type of failure, and that process can take many years

…and yet few seemed ready to apply these lessons to the housing crisis. In general: a shortage of affordable housing (relative to the income and wealth of poor and working class Canadians) was readily and commonly acknowledged. That current national levels of social housing stock (largely frozen since the early 1990s) would need to be doubled or tripled to meet low-income housing need only seems to imply a consensus that no government will ever seriously expand social housing. The consequence of this assumption is that we are stuck with what we have, and we must largely rely upon privately-built housing stock – a market that also currently fails to meet low-income housing need.

Within this dominant paradigm, limited (and well-documented) policy options remain: increase income supports, increase vouchers (otherwise known as portable rent supplements), subsidize an increase in overall market housing supply, and/or regulate new and existing housing stock to achieve fair distribution. I could not attend *all* concurrent sessions, but in those I did attend:

  • Few if any appeared ready to propose or estimate the total necessary cost of demand-side supports or supplements to end homelessness, and
  • Few if any appeared ready to propose the supply-side subsidy or regulation required to make the private housing market fulfill low-income housing need.

Instead, a number of ongoing practices in various parts of Canada were presented as ‘models’ of housing stabilization and eviction prevention. The most troubling example was a pilot project summarized by staff from Mission Services Hamilton, who proposed to “monetize” evictions by ensuring their services met the needs of a private landlord: specifically, the owner of Hanlyn Property Management. In exchange for having the landlord attach a flyer for Mission Services to all of his eviction notices for rental arrears, Mission Services proposed to either (a) urge tenants to repay their arrears if possible, or (b) urge tenants to voluntarily move out rather than oppose the eviction in a Landlord and Tenant Board hearing, in exchange for a good reference from the landlord. Moreover: the landlord confessed that sometimes, he really does not want certain tenants to save their tenancies even if they can afford a repayment plan, because he may find them to be particularly difficult people. He was relieved when Mission Services assured him that he did not need to attach their flyer to the eviction notices for *all* tenants.

Most other non-profit and local government delegates did not attempt to pass off such uncritical commitment to landlord interests as their eviction prevention strategies. However, many did express feelings of powerlessness when it came to addressing what they understood to be discriminatory housing refusals, disrepair, and unfair rental practices in the private market. Perhaps as a natural consequence, some presenters seemed prepared to blame low-income tenants themselves for the housing crisis. For example, a researcher from the University of Calgary and an employee of the City of Calgary suggested they found it both troubling and problematic that so many families living in Calgary’s social housing units and receiving subsidized rents were remaining in place for five to ten years or more, rather than increasing their incomes and getting off subsidy. These two Calgarians speculated that the threat of losing subsidy was encouraging those social housing tenants to remain poor, and preferred the expectation that social housing tenants quickly “progress” out of subsidy and along the housing continuum. “We used to just place these tenants in social housing and not worry about what they did after that… but maybe now… that needs to change,” they wondered.

These attitudes were by no means the only ones on display, and other local ideas offered genuine potential for national application. For example, Ryan Dwyer of the University of British Columbia discussed the potential efficacy of direct cash transfers to certain segments of the homeless population. Terrilee Kelford spoke to the cost efficiency of slab-on-grade “tiny homes” both as transitional rural youth housing in Lanark County, and as supply-subsidized private affordable housing that leverages secondary suite planning policy in neighbouring Lennox and Addington County.

Social justice lawyers and legal advocates for at-risk tenants and homeless people were largely absent from the CAEH conference. Of course, the lack of government-funded civil legal aid and poverty law clinics outside of Ontario, except for the limited clinical programs hosted by law schools across Canada, may be related. But in my view, the use of phrases like “rights-based” seemed all too common among CAEH presenters, researchers, and policy-makers, without any corresponding commitment to see that the beneficiaries of those rights have sufficient access to justice such that they might claim and enforce those rights against public and private actors alike. Civil legal aid – namely, free legal representation to protect the housing rights of low-income persons – should be seen as an essential requirement before any low-income housing system may be termed “rights-based”.

One recent addition to the CAEH, in particular, understands this: healthcare workers. Just as poverty lawyers’ perspectives are shaped by their professional obligation to prefer the individual interests of their homeless and inadequately housed clients above the interests of all others in society, so too are health professionals required to clearly articulate the truth about their patients’ conditions and individual needs without compromise or limit arising from other political considerations. Whether the public will afford an expensive treatment technology may be an administrative question, but that does not necessarily stop a physician from identifying when such treatment technologies are medically necessary. While by no means perfect, healthcare and health policy has the potential to address homelessness in a manner that correctly prioritizes human flourishing over the interests of private capital.

The health sector’s emerging approach to homelessness is informed by direct, ground-level experiences with patients whose lack of adequate, stable housing can be seen in a perspective shared by poverty lawyers: an acute threat to individual well-being and survival that demands urgent action. And when each sector proposes upstream solutions, they do so without losing sight of the need to improve individual outcomes. These links are what make medical-legal partnerships a powerful tool for communities resisting housing injustice.

Now, more than ever, I am proud to remain affiliated with the Health Justice Program through local community legal clinics, St. Michael’s Hospital and Family Health Team. I am also excited to support the launch of the Canadian Network for the Health and Housing of the Homelessness (CNH3), an important organizational pillar within the CAEH and a natural home for front-line poverty lawyers fighting for the right to housing in Canada.

The 2020 annual CAEH conference will take place in Toronto.