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