Toronto’s summer’s strike had garbage was literally left on the streets, but the coming weeks and months may see it shift from the literal to the metaphorical.
Toronto defence lawyers began a boycott of legal aid cases in June. The boycott soon spread to other Ontario cities. The issue was that the systems rate haven’t kept up with inflation, whichi s fine for a year or two of hardship but the legal profession argues that decades of underfunding means the rates are simply no longer acceptable – at least for lengthy court cases. And lengthy court cases are what occur when defendants try to prove they didn’t, indeed, pull the trigger that killed a suspected gang member.
The boycott seems to have worked as the Provincial Government has put $150 million into the Ontario legal aid system. I’m not sure where that money comes from at a time of massive government deficient but hey, at maybe they can take it from the funds they were gonna put towards the streetcars we don’t need.
It is really amazing to see that the Government respond to their “stakeholders” within a very short time period when you consider that that most Government promises are continously procrastinated. In the end the little man of our community has paid for the benfit of these lawyers who balked at the $400/day payment when the very people that they repersent only live on that amount per month. I understand the other issues, but please how many people went homeless or ened up in worst case conditions because thier lawyer was not making “enough money”. There was no work to rule policy that Teacher unions will often use as a tactic or anything of a similiar strategy-instead, let go for the jugular and screw the little man, I mean after all, our economy will help them jobs!