Downtown Legal ServicesThe Ontario Human Rights Commission is looking into the relationship between the Toronto Police and the Black community. If you are a Black person who has experienced discrimination or racial profiling by the police, the OHRC wants to hear from you.
Caregivers Action Centre (CAC) is working in coalition with a broad range of groups to get a repeal of Section 38(1)(c) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), which excludes people with certain medical conditions and disabled people from Canada. Section 38(1)(c) allows for an applicant to be rejected if they or their family member “might reasonably be expected to cause excessive demand on health or social services.” For caregivers, this means that if any of their family members has a disability, the caregiver and her entire family is barred from becoming permanent residents here.
If you know a caregiver or any other migrant affected by this issue who is not already connected to the campaign, please put them in touch with the CAC at info@caregiversactioncentre.org or 647-782-6633.
Visit http://migrantrights.ca/en/nodiscrimination/ to sign a petition repealing Section 38.
For an updated list of opportunities to engage with groups doing meaningful work on these issues, jump to the bottom of this page.
We are deeply disturbed by the Executive Orders issued by U.S. President Donald Trump concerning preclusion and detention of Latin American migrants along the southern U.S. border (82 FR 8793), persons born in certain Muslim-majority countries (82 FR 8977), and undocumented persons already inside the U.S. (82 FR 8799), together with the ongoing implementation and enforcement of these orders by officers of the U.S. government. We condemn and mourn these acts of racist exclusion, just as we condemn and mourn the murders of Azzeddine Soufiane, Khaled Belkacemi, Ibrahima Barry, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Abdelkrim Hassane, and Boubaker Thabti, who were shot in an act of terror and hatred as they prayed peacefully in their Quebec City mosque last weekend.
Downtown Legal Services was founded over 40 years ago so that law students at the University of Toronto could assist marginalized people in our city. Today, our clinic’s client community stretches across borders and around the globe, as we work to reunite families and seek justice for refugees, migrant workers, and international students alike. We stand with them, just as we stand with our many allies, our fellow legal clinics, partner agencies, and movements that have mobilized in the face of these oppressive events. We support the demands that they have made through the National Days of Action Against Islamophobia, White Supremacy & Deportations.
We applaud the tireless work of clinical faculty and law students throughout the U.S. in cooperation with the American Civil Liberties Union and its partners to provide emergency legal services for those facing detention and deportation at major airports this week. We are also proud to of the over 200 Canadian law professors – including those from our own University of Toronto – who have called on the Canadian government to suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement.
Staff and students at DLS, as well as our colleagues with the Faculty of Law’s International Human Rights Program and our allies with the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers and the Canadian Council for Refugees, will continue working to challenge discrimination and demand an end to both the Safe Third Country Agreement and the Designated Country of Origin regime, just as we have for the past several years. Our clients lived the risks and felt the dangers of these policies long before President Trump’s actions brought them into the public spotlight. We therefore acknowledge that our deep sense of injustice in response to these actions comes from our clients’ stories of failure, success, suffering, and relief. They continue to teach us what justice is, and we are privileged to learn from them what the law ought to be.
If you are reading this and find yourself asking how you can engage further with these issues and work in partnership with communities directly affected by current refugee and migration policy, we have attempted to list some of the related projects and opportunities of which we are aware:
We will continue to update this list as we become aware of related resources and opportunities to get involved.
Online volunteer application form now live! Fill out the form here and submit by 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 15, 2016.
Also, click here for more information about our 2016-2017 volunteer program.
Today marks the official start to the campaign period for a referendum called by the University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) to increase the levy paid to DLS by University of Toronto undergraduate students. For more information, check out our campaign site at voteyesdls.ca!
DLS is pleased to announce expansion of its family law program, thanks to generous new funding from our primary funder, Legal Aid Ontario. DLS launched its family law program in 2005 in response to overwhelming community need. Since this time, we have provided desperately needed family law services to clients who, but for DLS, would have had to navigate the legal system alone. However, our ability to assist clients and offer valuable clinical placements in family law has been hampered by our limited resources. We are very grateful to LAO for this additional funding, which will allow us significantly expand this innovative program.
For more information about the new funding, see Legal Aid Ontario’s funding announcement. Visit our family law page to learn more about the work of this exciting division.
It is with a mixture of sadness and gratitude that we note the approaching retirement of Linn Kennedy, our office manager. Linn is putting the finishing touches on a career that includes nearly two decades of exemplary service to our clinic. If you have had the pleasure of working with Linn as a student or staff member, please add your well-wishes to our virtual retirement card. You can do so via Facebook comment here, or by tweeting @downtownlegal with the hashtag #thanksLK . We’ll collect your submissions near the end of August and share them with Linn.
DLS’s Social Work program is featured in the Spring 2014 Edition of REACH, the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work’s magazine. Read the article (see page 5) and visit our social work page to find out more about this innovative new program, and to learn how law students and social work students are working side by side to enhance our client services and their own learning and skills development.