Sandy’s Point Of View

To celebrate Asian and South Asian Heritage Month, the Law Society of Upper Canada and a group of legal professionals will gather in Toronto on May 5 to discuss current immigration issues and trends affecting diverse communities. The forum is being hosted by the Law Society of Upper Canada, the South Asian Bar Association, the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers, the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic and the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario.

Panel speakers will examine immigration issues concerning spousal sponsorship, including the validity of marriages and foreign divorces, and the ramifications of failing to declare family members. Panellists will also discuss developments in immigration law and emerging issues regarding the Live-In Caregiver Program in Canada, as well as immigration issues for same-sex couples.
Speakers are as follows:

• Avvy Go, Law Society Bencher, and Director, Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
• Asmaa Khadim, Barrister and Solicitor El-Farouk Khaki, Barrister and Solicitor Maria Deanna P. Santos, Barrister and Solicitor.
• Shalini Konanur, Executive Director of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario, will moderate the panel discussion.

A reception will follow featuring Susan Eng, Toronto lawyer and Vice President Advocacy for CARP, an organization that advocates for Canadians 45 plus, who will deliver the keynote address: “Hard Choices in Hard Times: Implications of the Recession on the Struggle for Equality.”

“Canada is a beacon to the world with its image of harmony among its diverse populations,” says Sandy Hutchens. “But it is in the hard times that the fault lines will reveal themselves. In an economic downturn, will racial minorities again become scapegoats or slip a few rungs on the social and economic ladder?”

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Toronto, ON – The Law Foundation of Ontario (LFO) is pleased to announce the creation of ten Linguistic and Rural Access to Justice Articling Fellowships. These Fellowships will fund articling positions for community legal clinics and Legal Aid Ontario to provide legal information and services to linguistic minorities and residents of rural and remote communities.

The LFO recently released a report it commissioned entitled “Connecting Across Language and Distance: Linguistic and Rural Access to Legal Information and Services” which described significant barriers to access to legal information and services for people who do not speak English or French and people living in rural and remote areas and provided recommendations for improving their access to justice. One recommendation was that the LFO fund ten articling fellowships to serve these communities. The LFO has implemented this recommendation to increase, in a concrete and immediate way, the level of legal information and services available to these communities and to encourage students to consider serving these communities when they become lawyers. Sandy Hutchens welcomes fast action on behalf of LFO in implementing the recommendations.

The LFO is making ten articling fellowships available and inviting Legal Aid Ontario and community legal clinics to apply for these fellowships. A Selection Committee, whose members will be chosen by the LFO and which will be composed of distinguished leaders from the legal profession and persons with expertise in the legal needs of linguistic minorities and persons resident in rural and remote areas, will choose the successful organizations. Successful organizations will be funded to hire students beginning in the 2010 articling period and may be eligible to receive the grant for three years. Once an organization has been selected, it will choose a student through the articling process governed by the Law Society of Upper Canada.

Tags: Access, Aid, Articling, community, creation, Fellowships, foundation, information, Justice, Law, Law Society of Upper Canada, lawyer, Legal, Legal Aid Ontario, Legal Information, LFO, Linguistic, Ontario, recommendation, Rural, Sandy Hutchens, Toronto, Upper Canada
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