CLASP (Community and Legal Aid Services Programme)
4700 Keele St M3J 1P3 Toronto, ON, Canada

On Tuesday, October 20th, Justice Robert Kelly rendered the long-awaited verdict of Constable Daniel Montsion, who was charged with manslaughter, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon following the fatal arrest of Abdirahman Abdi. Mr. Abdi was an unarmed, Black, man, who struggled with mental health issues. In the moments leading up to the violent arrest on July 24th 2016, Const. Montsion arrived on the scene equipped with special gloves that were described as brass k...Continue reading

In the Criminal Justice System, the cost of not being convicted can be very heavy. Non-conviction information can have serious consequences for a person’s future. Vulnerable sector checks (a type of criminal record check) disclose non-conviction information in certain circumstances. These checks maintain hierarchies of exclusion by keeping people in over-policed communities out of public sector employment and highly regarded jobs (i.e. government work, teaching, policing, etc...Continue reading

While the Bank of Canada is typically neutral about issues of inequality, the current governor, Tiff Macklem, is sounding the alarm. Like many others, Macklem is concerned about the disproportionate impact COVID-19 has had on low wage earners. A particularly alarming statistic is that Low-wage workers are 20 per cent below their pre-pandemic levels of employment. By contrast, higher wage earners are more likely to have recouped the job losses they suffered from this past spri...Continue reading

The Ontario Court of Justice (OCJ) paused operations in March due to the Emergency Order in response to COVID-19. As a result of the pause in operations, the OCJ decided to auto-adjourn set date appearances for 10 weeks at the time, up to the end of August in some jurisdictions. Set date appearances are mostly used to update the court on the status of the matter. While retained counsel often appear on behalf of accused persons, there are many self-represented accused that hav...Continue reading

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we live our lives and has impacted millions of people in Canada and around the world. However, the severity of these impacts varies greatly amongst different demographic groups. The initial response to the outbreak resulted in mass business closures that have left many people unemployed, and prospects for getting back to work in the near future are looking bleak. Government wage support programs cannot last forever, so what happens wh...Continue reading

With different experiences comes different needs, and therefore a different plan put in place. Homeless youth or youth who are precariously housed are being disproportionately affected by the global pandemic. For these vulnerable populations, there is a lack of access to proper hygiene and a lack of space for physical distancing. With nationwide shut-downs and most work moving to an online platform, for many of us this just means that we will be working from home and saving t...Continue reading

This week the Toronto Star profiled two Black Metrolinx employees who were fired from their jobs after failing a police background check, despite having no criminal record. Josslyn Mounsey and Thairu Taban were not told why they had failed their background checks but suspect that it was due to their race, their family connections, or contact with police while growing up in Toronto’s poorer neighbourhoods. While working at Metrolinx these two believed that they had landed thei...Continue reading

With calls to defund and abolish the police being widely heard and with increasing traction, an acknowledgment of the secondary civil legal effects people accused of criminal offences face is timely. Alyshah Hasham’s recent Toronto Star article describes many of the destructive consequences experienced by Ontarians accused of criminal offences (justice involved Ontarians) especially those incarcerated for even a short length of time. Hasham points to a recent report from ...Continue reading