Legal Aid Ontario Annual Report

2007

A n nua l R e p o r t Legal Aid Ontario strives to be a world leader in supporting and assuring excellence in high-quality legal aid services to clients and communities.

statutory mandate The Legal Aid Services Act, 1998 establishes the following mandate for Legal Aid Ontario:

low-income individuals and disadvantaged communities.

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To promote access to justice throughout Ontario for low-income individuals by providing high quality legal aid services.

To operate within a framework of accountability for the expenditure of public funds.

To encourage and facilitate flexibility and innovation in the provision of legal aid services.

In fulfilling this mandate Legal Aid Ontario is committed to providing services which recognize the importance of diversity, access, equity, creativity and quality.

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To recognize the diverse legal needs of

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our vision To ensure that healthy communities include responsive and meaningful legal aid services and improved access to justice.

Independence

VALUES

Accountability

Integrity

We act with integrity and we assume that others do so.

Respect

We practice respect in all relationships.

Responsiveness

We are responsive to clients, stakeholders and staff.

We treat people in an equitable way, recognizing their needs.

Excellence We strive for excellence and continuous quality improvement.

We aim to attract and retain the best employees.

We are an independent part of the justice system.

We are accountable to the government, clients, stakeholders and staff.

Openness We are open and consultative in decisionmaking.

Consistency We are consistent in our processes and decisionmaking.

We create unity across the organization.

We make decisions on the basis of facts and sound principles.

contents Letter to the Minister......................................... 4 Message from the Chair....................................... 5 Message from the President and CEO..................... 6 Board of directors.............................................. 7 About Legal Aid Ontario..................................... 8 Achievements, improvements & investments ........ 10 Client services.................................................. 14

Legal aid certificates.................................... 14

Duty counsel............................................... 16

Community legal clinics................................ 17

Student legal aid services societies................. 18

Management’s responsibility for financial information................................... 21 Auditor’s report............................................... 22 Audited financial statements.............................. 23 Management’s discussion and analysis................. 38

Legal Aid Ontario / 2007 Annual Report

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letter

to the minister September 2007 The Honourable Michael Bryant Attorney General for Ontario 720 Bay Street Toronto, ON M5G 2K1 Dear Minister; Legal Aid Ontario is pleased to submit to you the Annual Report for Legal Aid Ontario for the year ended March 31, 2007, in accordance with Section 72 of the Legal Aid Services Act, 1998.

On behalf of the many people throughout Ontario who have benefited from the services of Legal Aid, we extend thanks to you, the Ministry of the Attorney General and the Government of Ontario for your continued support.

Yours sincerely,

John D. McCamus, Chair Legal Aid Ontario

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Legal Aid Ontario / 2007 Annual Report

message

from the chair

Having just assumed my responsibilities as Chair of Legal Aid Ontario in July, I must extend great thanks and due credit to my predecessor, Janet Leiper, who played an integral role in improving access to justice for Ontarians during her tenure in this post. The challenges of ensuring that everyone in Ontario has fair and equal access to justice, regardless of their economic or social standing, are many, but Legal Aid Ontario has made tremendous strides over the past years, through bold experimentation and growth, to ensure this happens consistently in every jurisdictional corner of this beautiful province of ours.

The leadership demonstrated by Ms. Leiper during her tenure as Chair has had a lasting and positive impact that will help ensure that the most disadvantaged members of our society have access to justice... an unassailable principle of any true democracy. I can only hope that I am able to continue to build on this important legacy.

As the statistics laid out in this report demonstrate, Legal Aid Ontario provides a broad range and remarkable volume of legal aid services to low-income Ontarians. These achievements rest on the valuable contributions of our partners in the legal aid system: the community clinics, private lawyers, staff lawyers, law students and other service providers who directly meet the needs of our clients for legal aid service. We are very grateful to them all and to others who assist in this work by sitting on Boards of clinics and our various advisory committees.

Legal Aid Ontario has a large and dedicated full-time and part-time staff complement. Their contributions are enormously important to the achievement of our mandate. Under the leadership of Robert Ward, who joined Legal Aid Ontario as President and CEO in September 2006, Legal Aid Ontario and its senior management team have embarked on an ambitious plan to improve the service delivery models for legal services for low-income Ontarians, all the while doing so with an unwavering commitment to providing taxpayers with value and accountability.

Finally, I want to thank the Legal Aid Ontario Board of Directors for their dedicated support and commitment. The individuals who sit on the board come from diverse backgrounds, but all have made a major contribution in providing leadership and direction to Legal Aid Ontario at an important and challenging point in the organization’s history.

John McCamus Chair

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message

from the president & ceo The welcome announcement at the end of the 2006-2007 fiscal year that the provincial government will be providing an additional $51 million in funding to Legal Aid Ontario over the next three years is a significant demonstration by the people of Ontario that they care deeply about the legal aid needs of low-income people. Together with Legal Aid Ontario’s revenues from the Law Foundation, the additional investment in Legal Aid Ontario by the public demonstrates both the confidence and expectation of the people of Ontario that we will spend every dollar effectively and efficiently.

Respecting this trust, we have established a goal for ourselves at Legal Aid Ontario to increase our overall productivity by 1% each year for the next five years—we call this our Value Agenda.

We will consider everything that is reasonable to create this added value and we will measure our progress through rigorous management practices. It is an ambitious goal, but it is achievable. In so doing, we will ensure that the savings we generate are re-invested in two key areas: more service to clients and modernizing Legal Aid Ontario as a public institution.

To achieve this increase in legal aid impact, we have devised a management strategy to govern the next five years of Legal Aid Ontario’s development. The strategy will be driven by the implementation of five key management principles at every level of our operation: Innovation: We will establish an even more vigorous corporate culture that allows ideas to come forward and embraces new approaches to solving problems.

Measurement: We will create and implement modern tools to measure Legal Aid Ontario’s performance, identify our successes, and inform our decisions.

Prioritization: We will establish inclusive and accountable processes and criteria for making clear and principled decisions on Legal Aid Ontario’s priorities and the allocation of resources.

Accountability: We will ensure that clear, sound management and financial accountability systems are in place throughout Legal Aid Ontario so there is no doubt as to where the responsibility lies for taking action and making decisions at all levels; and we will ensure that the legislation governing Legal Aid Ontario and setting out its precise roles and functions will be scrupulously followed.

Co-ordination: We will give full expression to our legislated mandate to maximize impact for clients by improving the coordination of legal aid services and ensuring that Legal Aid Ontario is managed to ensure synergy among all of its programming and administrative functions.

There is no particular program or organizational end state to the application of these principles. There is, however, something much more: the development of a vibrant corporate culture that continually evolves to new heights of achievement of its mandate to serve the legal aid needs of low-income Ontarians.

Robert Ward President and CEO

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Legal Aid Ontario / 2007 Annual Report

board of directors LAO Board Members 2006-2007

Standing, left to right: William J. Prosperi, Janet Leiper (Past Chair), Shelley Laskin, Julie Di Lorenzo, Jennifer Gullen, Raj Anand, Robert W. Ward (Ex-officio member) Sitting, left to right: Aly Alibhai, W.A. Derry Millar, Sujit Choudhry, Paul Dray

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about legal aid ontario what we do Legal Aid Ontario operates 51 offices in 48 communities across the province and funds 80 community legal clinics throughout Ontario, including 17 specialty clinics that provide assistance to clients in such areas of law as worker’s compensation, housing, income security, and worker’s health and safety.

In major urban centres, mid-sized towns and in remote rural locales, Legal Aid is available to lowincome individuals and disadvantaged communities for a variety of legal problems, including criminal matters, family disputes, immigration and refugee hearings and poverty law issues such as landlord/ tenant disputes, disability support and family benefits payments.

This year, Legal Aid Ontario provided legal help in more than 1.3 million instances through its many

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programs and services, including in-house legal services, community legal clinics, duty counsel, Student Legal Aid Services Society and the legal aid certificate program, which gives low-income people access to legal representation from a pool of several thousand private lawyers who undertake legal aid work. This marks an increase in legal aid services provided over the previous year of approximately 5.8 per cent.

In 1998, the Ontario government enacted the Legal Aid Services Act in which the province renewed and strengthened its commitment to legal aid. The Act established Legal Aid Ontario, an independent but publicly funded and publicly accountable non-profit corporation, to administer the province’s legal aid program.

Total number of services provided

by Legal Aid Ontario

2005 - 2006

2006 - 2007

Number of legal aid certificates issued

111,018

109,101

Number of legal assists provided by duty counsel

961,396

1,046,956

Services provided by clinics

207,923

199,328

Number of cases opened by Student Legal Aid Service

17,441

17,560

Total

1,297,778

1,372,945

Legal Aid Ontario / 2007 Annual Report

advisory committees prison, mental health, Aboriginal law and French language services. The role of these committees is to ensure that various individuals and organizations that work with LAO have input on and access to the organization’s decisions and that LAO is accountable to these audiences.

Under the Legal Aid Services Act, LAO established a number of advisory committees consisting of community representatives and LAO board members.

These committees advise on areas of the law including criminal, family and clinic law. In addition to these required committees, LAO has formed others covering each of immigration and refugee,

area committees Approximately 700 people, lawyers and community representatives, volunteer hundreds of hours of their time on these committees across the province.

Area committees hear appeals from decisions of area

directors who have refused or cancelled a legal aid certificate and decide whether to issue certificates in appeal cases.

group applications and test case committee This is an advisory committee responsible for reviewing group applications for legal aid, applications for representation at coroners’ inquests and test cases involving the Charter of Rights and

Freedoms. The committee recommends whether or not a legal aid certificate should be issued. The committee consists primarily of lawyers and also at least one law professor.

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achievements improvements & investment Strategic Planning: In the fall of 2006, Legal Aid Ontario began the Quantum strategic planning initiative, an ongoing process to encourage continuous improvement in everything we do to speak to our clients’ needs, as well as taxpayers’ expectations. The Quantum initiative included extensive discussions with Legal Aid Ontario employees and set the stage for further discussions with service providers and other key stakeholders, all in the pursuit of access to justice in Ontario. The result was the establishment of a management strategy for the next five years that seeks to maximize efficiency and effectiveness through innovation, measurement, prioritization, accountability and coordination.

The Value Agenda: The Ontario Government announced new funding for Legal Aid Ontario in the 2007 provincial budget. The investment, an additional $51 million, will be spread over three years, beginning in 2007-08, ultimately raising Legal Aid Ontario’s budgetary base by $19 million. The goal of Legal Aid Ontario’s Value Agenda is to match the value of the new base increase with program and administrative efficiencies and innovations over the next five years.

The Corporate Environment: To address the need to create more places where innovation can be successfully nurtured within Legal Aid Ontario, a new corporate reporting structure has been introduced within the organization. Set up across four geographic regions in Ontario, the new organizational design will allow Legal Aid Ontario to be more responsive to the needs of clients and staff by improving the co-ordination of services for clients and by more fully engaging local stakeholders in Legal Aid Ontario’s business.

Additionally, it will help Legal Aid Ontario achieve

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Legal Aid Ontario / 2007 Annual Report

the goals of the Value Agenda, including efforts to develop centralized and cohesive points of contact with stakeholders; optimize communications among Legal Aid Ontario staff and between managers and staff; and articulate clear accountabilities for all Legal Aid Ontario programs. The structure will also provide clinics with greater access to Legal Aid Ontario senior management and to regional Legal Aid Ontario service partners.

LAO Provincial Office Relocation: In line with the Value Agenda, the Corporate Services Division has negotiated a lease for new office space close to the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto that will generate almost $900,000 in annual savings. The move, scheduled for June 2008, will help facilitate increased co-ordination of services and resources by co-locating the Legal Aid Ontario Provincial Office, Toronto Area Office, the Family Law Office and Refugee Law Office on a single floor at the new location.

In addition to the savings, the re-location to Atrium on Bay will provide a modern backdrop from which we can continue to pursue our management strategy and value agenda. As part of the move, we will be updating our work environment to one that is modern, innovative, enhances communication and coordination, and is in line with the OPS and other public sector organizations.

This includes implementing an “open office concept” for all employees, the President included, modernizing our work environment, and developing work from home protocols. It is expected that by updating our environment we will reduce our space requirements from 85,000 to about 70,000, a 17 per cent reduction.

investment in legal aid The Ontario government’s recent infusion of $51 million of funding to LAO over three years demonstrates the commitment of the people of Ontario to ensure that low-income Ontarians receive access to the vital legal services they need and to improving those services by: n Increasing the legal aid tariff rate, helping LAO to ensure that there will be a steady stream of legal aid service providers to serve clients n Re-examining LAO’s financial eligibility criteria to make legal aid accessible to more people n Strengthening family law services by increasing the number of available certificates n

Boosting funding for big cases

Strengthening clinic law services by funding a new clinic, addressing increasing operating costs and improving French language services n

n

Establishing an Aboriginal Services Strategy

n Expanding services to people who do not speak English or French n

Improving case management in clinics

Increasing the legal aid tariffs: Applying to legal aid certificates issued and duty counsel services rendered on or after April 1, 2007, the Ministry of the Attorney General announced a 5 per cent increase to the tariff paid to private lawyers who provide legal aid services to low-income Ontarians. The new tariff rate increase will make it more financially feasible for lawyers to provide legal aid services, helping to ensure that people with low-incomes have access to stable, high quality legal services that respond to their needs.

Legal Aid Ontario expects that the increase to the tariff rate will lead to more lawyers accepting legal aid certificates, resulting in more clients being served.

Legal Aid Ontario will be able to track the rates at which lawyers accept certificates and note the effect of the increased tariff rate.

An increase to the articling student tariff rate from $23 to $46 per hour, which also came into effect April 1, will make it easier for lawyers to hire articling students and provide better services to their legal aid clients.

Legal Aid Ontario will be able to track the number of student hours billed, and note whether there has been an increase in billings after the tariff rate increase.

Re-examining financial eligibility criteria: As the financial eligibility test for clients has not been reviewed for over a decade, a comprehensive financial eligibility study will help Legal Aid Ontario move towards considering new eligibility criteria that better reflect modern means testing principles. In 2006-2007, Legal Aid Ontario commissioned a review and report by an outside expert looking at the way in which financial eligibility is currently calculated, and examining whether there are options for simplifying and streamlining the existing test.

In 2007-2008, Legal Aid Ontario will continue to work closely with the consultant on the next stage of the process, which will involve developing a review that proposes what a new financial eligibility test should look like, and that analyzes the likely impact of the new test on clients.

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achievements improvements & investment continued

strengthening family law services services, and will help to ensure that family services are not “squeezed out” by those criminal law services that are constitutionally mandated. In addition, Legal Aid Ontario has allocated one time funding for a pool of 500 “reserve” family certificates to deal with fluctuations in demand for family law services over the next three years.

Each year, thousands of people turn to Legal Aid Ontario for help with family issues. This includes women and children living in situations of domestic violence, or facing child custody and spousal support issues.

An increase in family law certificates by 750 per year will help to ease increasing demands for family law

boosting funding for big cases There has been an increase in the number of large, complex cases involving multiple accused. Hand in hand with this increase is a need to ensure that when charges are laid, legal aid is available.

In order to meet the demand for legal aid coverage in complex and costly criminal trials, LAO is investing an additional $5 million annually into its Big Case

Management program. This investment will ensure that adequate resources are available to provide legal coverage for these types of cases without jeopardizing other legal aid services. This new funding will coincide with Legal Aid Ontario’s current work on clarifying accountabilities for big case management.

strengthening clinic law services Increases in clinic staff salaries and investment in clinic operational costs will help clinics to recruit and retain qualified staff, maximize administrative efficiency, and devote more time to serving clients rather than on having to overcome operational

challenges as a result of inadequate funding.

Clinic successes will be measured within current accountability structures and performance measures while Legal Aid Ontario continues to develop new measures for clinic law services.

establishing a new clinic to serve the south asian community Base funding for the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO) will help ensure that Toronto’s South Asian community continues to be served.

Legal Aid Ontario will measure the success of the

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Legal Aid Ontario / 2007 Annual Report

clinic using clinic performance measures already in place for all Legal Aid Ontario funded clinics, while Legal Aid Ontario continues to work on new measures for clinics.

establishing an aboriginal services strategy Aboriginal people represent 2.6% of Canadian adults, yet they make up 21% of adults in jail, 19% of people given a conditional sentence and 16% of those on probation. In the summer of 2007, Legal Aid Ontario began consulting widely on the development of an organization-wide strategy for improving services to Aboriginal clients. Legal Aid

Ontario will be working closely with staff of the Ministry of the Attorney General to ensure a high level of coordination between Legal Aid Ontario and the Ministry’s Aboriginal strategies. In the spring of 2008, the CEO will present to the Board a final report, which will include recommended strategic directions.

expanding services to people who do not speak english or french People who do not understand English or French are over-represented among Ontario’s poor. Nearly five per cent of Ontarians below the poverty line cannot speak French or English and 25% speak another language at home.

Community Legal Education Ontario (CLEO) is a community legal clinic dedicated to providing linguistic and culturally sensitive materials for some

of the province’s communities in greatest need of information about their legal rights. The funding allocated towards the expansion of the CLEO program will expand CLEO’s Six Languages Text and Audio Project by making more information available to the existing six language groups (Arabic, Chinese, Somali, Spanish, Tamil, and Urdu).

improving case management in the clinics The Clinic Information Management project will provide a case management system for clinics to support day-to-day operational activities, performance management and business planning.

It will improve the information provided to clinic

boards and to Legal Aid Ontario to assist both groups in fulfilling their performance management obligations. One potential software solution is currently being piloted in the Simcoe clinic and will be evaluated on an ongoing basis.

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client services legal aid certificates Legal Aid Ontario’s certificate program is a service that allows eligible low-income clients to obtain the services of a private-practice lawyer to represent them in important legal matters.

Legal aid certificates are issued by Legal Aid Ontario offices across the province to financially eligible clients who need specific legal services in the areas of family law, refugee law, criminal law, child welfare, mental health law and certain areas of civil law.

When a client receives a legal aid certificate he or she can take it to one of the nearly 4,000 private practice lawyers in Ontario who accept legal aid case files. If the lawyer accepts the certificate, they are guaranteed payment for the authorized legal services they provide to the client.

Lawyers who work on behalf of clients on legal aid certificates are paid by Legal Aid Ontario based on tariff rates established by the Government of Ontario.

A total of 141,757 applications for legal aid certificates were received in 2006-07. The number of applications for legal aid continues to place pressure on certificate targets. Increased demand can result in more certificate refusals. The rate of refusal increased marginally over last year but is 3.6% higher than in 2004-05. The following depicts the rate of refusal during the last three fiscal years:

Certificate Activity 100% 80% 60% 40% 20%

19%

23%

23% Certificates Issued

0% 2004-05

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Legal Aid Ontario / 2007 Annual Report

2005-06 2006-07 Fiscal Year

Certificate Refusals

Number of Certificate Applications and Refusals Fiscal Year

Applications Taken

# Refused

% Refused

2004-05

131, 157

25,495

19.4%

2005-06

143,226

32,208

22.5%

2006-07

141,757

32,656

23.0%

There are three basic reasons for certificate refusal including; those persons who do not qualify for legal reasons, those individuals who are granted a certificate but abandon the process, and those persons who do not qualify due to the fact that their financial circumstances exceed the eligibility threshold.

Historically, each of these reasons accounts for approximately one-third of total refusals on an annual basis.

certificates issued over the previous year. The change in the total certificates issued between these two years is mainly attributable to a reduction in family certificates. At the same time, the number of criminal certificates issued continues to increase.

The decrease experienced in 2006-07 will be substantially offset as the result of the recent government funding announcement that will allow more family certificates to be issued in the coming year.

Legal Aid Ontario issued 109,101 certificates in 2006-07. This represents a slightly lower volume of

Number of Legal Aid Certificates Issued by Category Aid Category

2004-05

2005-06

2006-07

Criminal

61,666

65,510

65,784

Family

27,091

28,704

26,450

Refugee/Immigration

11,396

10,992

11,060

Other Civil

5,509

5,812

5,807

TOTAL

105,662

111,018

109,101

Legal Aid Ontario / 2007 Annual Report

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client services continued

duty counsel Duty counsel lawyers work in courtrooms across the province, providing efficient, cost-effective assistance to people in need of legal support. Duty counsel do “courtroom triage”, providing front-line advice, information and representation to individuals who would otherwise be unrepresented and unassisted.

Duty counsel services are provided by either in-house staff or private practice lawyers who are paid on a per diem basis. Without duty counsel services, Ontario’s criminal and family courtrooms would grind to a halt and would face immeasurable backlog.

The total number of people who received assistance from duty counsel lawyers increased by 8.9% overall in 2006-07, reaching a total of 1,046,956. The following chart illustrates the change in Duty Counsel assists between fiscal 2005-06 and 2006-07, by type of law:

In fiscal 2006-07 Criminal assists increased by 86,662, or 11%, and total Civil assists increased by 4,386, or 17%. The number of Family assists decreased by 5,488, or 3%, in the same period

Number of Duty Councsel Assists Provided 2005-06

2006-07

% Change

Criminal

757,778

844,440

10.3%

Family

177,385

171,897

-3.2%

Other

26,233

30,619

14.3%

TOTAL

961,396

1,04,956

8.2%

Duty Counsel Assists 1,100,000

Number of Assists

900,000 700,000 500,000 300,000 Other Civil Assists

100,000

Family Assists

2005-06 2006-07 Fiscal Year

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Legal Aid Ontario / 2007 Annual Report

Criminal Assists

community legal clinics Legal Aid Ontario funds 80 community legal clinics throughout the province, with 17 providing specialty legal services, to provide poverty law services, public legal education to agencies and low-income communities, and engage in law reform. Clinics are independent non-profit organizations.

General clinics provide low-income Ontarians legal support in a number of areas of law, including with the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), worker’s compensation, housing, worker’s health and safety, and

social benefits. In total, there were 155,840 services provided, with approximately 148,000 files being direct client services in the form of legal advice, brief service or full legal representation.

Specialty legal clinics focus on specific groups of disadvantaged clients or particular areas of law that affect large numbers of low-income people. Through test case litigation, law reform work and community development, legal clinics are often at the forefront of systemic change that benefits low-income Ontarians.

Clinic Services over the past 6 years 2001-2002

2002-2003

2003-2004

2004-2005

2005-2006

2006-2007

Cases

14,747

14,825

15,497

15,964

15,966

17,628

Brief services

26,063

30,076

31,356

28,790

29,170

28,795

Direct client services

Advice

93,502

97,302

98,296

103,872

100,951

101,515

Outreach*

4,471

5,157

6,143

6,419

7,323

7,902

TOTAL

138,803

147,360

151,292

155,045

153,410

155,840

Note that 2001-2004 figures are estimated fiscal year activity (Actual available from 2005). * Outreach refers to Community Development, Law Reform and Public Legal Education Activities.

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client services continued

student legal aid services societies Student Legal Aid Services Societies (SLASS) are university-based legal aid providers funded by Legal Aid Ontario to carry out the dual role of providing public legal education and delivering legal aid services to lowincome Ontarians.

Under the supervision of the Dean of the Faculty of Law at each of the six universities in Ontario with a law school, volunteer law students provide legal advice and representation to members of the public who cannot afford a lawyer but do not qualify for legal aid. Among the issues they deal with are minor criminal matters,

landlord and tenant disputes, immigration issues, workers’ rights and tribunals, including the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

In 2006 – 2007, more than 1,000 law students, or onequarter of all faculties of law students in the province, participated in the SLASS program. The SLASS program provided legal services to low-income Ontarians in 17,560 instances in 2006-2007, including everything from handling cases to providing summary advice and referrals to other legal service providers and resources.

Participtaion in Student Legal Aid Services Societies 2005

2006

Students Enrolled in Law Faculties*

3,793

3,865

Students Participating in SLASS program

985

1,016

(as a % of Total Enrolled)

25.97%

26.29%

* York University, University of Toronto, University of Windsor, Queen’s University, University of Ottawa, University of Western Ontario

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Legal Aid Ontario / 2007 Annual Report

Summary of Services Provided by Student Legal Aid Services Societies Number of Dire services 2005

2006

1.173

1.237

Landlord and Tenant

648

446

Consumer Rights and Civil Matters

451

295

Provincial Offenses

288

282

Other

504

479

Affidavits and Declarations

3,111

2,920

Summary Advice

2,962

2,606

Referrals

7,938

8,905

366

390

17,441

17,560

Criminal Cases

*Other Services TOTAL * Includes Public Legal Education; Law Reform and Outreach Activities

Legal Aid Ontario / 2007 Annual Report

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financial statements for the year ended March 31, 2007

contents Auditor’s Report................................................................. 22 Financial Statements

Balance Sheet............................................................... 23

Statement of Operations

and Accumulated Surplus (Deficit)................................ 24

Statement of Cash Flows................................................. 26

Summary of Significant Accounting Policies....................... 27

Notes to Financial Statements.......................................... 29

Management’s discussion and analysis.................................... 38

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Legal Aid Ontario / 2007 Annual Report

The accompanying summary of significant accounting policies and notes are an integral part of these financial statements.

The accompanying summary of significant accounting policies and notes are an integral part of these financial statements.

Legal Aid Ontario / 2007 Annual Report

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auditor’s letter

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Legal Aid Ontario / 2007 Annual Report

The accompanying summary of significant accounting policies and notes are an integral part of these financial statements.

Legal Aid Ontario’s annual report is also available in alternative formats.

For further information: n call our general information service: 416-979-1446 toll free: 1-800-668-8258 n call our TTY service: 416-598-8867 toll free: 1-866-641-8867 n email: info@lao.on.ca n fax: 416-979-8669 n visit our website: www.legalaid.on.ca

Legal Aid Ontario 375 University Avenue, Suite 404, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5G 2G1 Telephone: 416-979-1446 Toll free: 1-800-668-8258 Fax: 416-979-8669 Email: info@lao.on.ca Website: www.legalaid.on.ca Ce document est disponible en français.

Legal Aid Ontario receives financial assistance from the Government of Ontario.

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