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Easier access to legal aid By Tim Foran OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF 5 · Thursday, March 18, 2010 OAKVILLE BEAVER · www.oakvillebeaver.com Halton residents will have improved access to legal aid through the touch of their fingertips. Legal Aid Ontario (LAO), an independent corporation overseeing assistance to lowincome individuals, has announced Halton residents will now be able to apply for financial assistance to retain private lawyers through either its toll-free number or its courthouse office in Milton. Acquiring such assistance will no longer require individuals to go to LAO's Halton Legal Aid Office on Lakeshore Road East in Oakville. "We are shifting from a model where a client goes to an office in person for an application, to one where a full range of services are offered over the phone, and in-person at the courthouse," explained Carmela Runco, the area director for LAO's Hamilton district. Halton's four communities are included in LAO's Hamilton-Kitchener district. Increasing the variety of legal aid services offered at its courthouse office is in line with the Province's Justice on Target strategy, which aims to reduce court delays by 30 per cent, according to an LAO press release. LAO's toll-free number (1-800-668-8258, press 0), which provides translation services, also provides summary legal advice for family matters. The organization's office at the Milton courthouse on Steeles Avenue can also provide referrals to Halton Community Legal Services, a free community legal clinic located on Mill Street in Georgetown. The LAOfunded clinic provides low-income, disadvantaged people with legal assistance in basic needs areas, such as housing law, social assistance and other income support programs. "The Milton Courthouse will be among the first to benefit from new reforms to family justice," Runco added. The Province's Ministry of the Attorney General recently announced that LAO will develop an approach to family law so that children and their parents will have access to a faster, simpler and less confrontational system. According to the Ministry, one initiative includes providing support for clients and service providers to "participate in collaborative and non-confrontational approaches that provide solutions for the future of children and their parents." The bulk of LAO's work involves providing duty counsel in Ontario's courthouses. Its duty counsel in Milton for criminal and family law matters provided more than 50,000 legal "assists" last year, said Bunco. Duty counsel are private bar or Legal Aid Ontario staff lawyers who can give immediate, legal assistance to low-income people who appear in court without a lawyer, according to LAO's website. Creating sensational smiles in Oakville for 15 years. Oakville Generating Station Our Commitment to Safety · TransCanada has safely operated natural gas power plants in Ontario for nearly 20 years with no public safety incidents Every project we undertake is carefully planned to protect the communities in which we operate and the workers inside our plants We take the Middletown, Connecticut incident very seriously. Its cause is being linked to crews using natural gas to clean or purge on-site pipelines. This would not happen in Oakville or at any of TransCanada's power plants as we use compressed air to clean natural gas lines ­ preventing fire or an explosion TransCanada will continue to follow US Chemical Safety Board recommendations at all our power plants for cleaning natural gas pipelines · · · For more information on TransCanada's commitment to safety and how natural gas will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Ontario as coal-fired plants are closed, please visit http://www.transcanada.com/oakville/environment_safety.html View of Oakville Generating Station from Royal Windsor Drive