NORTHEAST — While staff’s being cut at the legal aid offices in Saskatoon, the same is not true for the Northeast.
“There are no changes planned for the operations conducted by the legal aid office in Melfort to serve its clients,” wrote Craig Goebel, the CEO for Saskatchewan Legal Aid, via email.
In Saskatoon, the family and criminal legal aid offices will be merged, six administrative employees have been laid off, and three lawyer positions will remain unfilled.
The Melfort office, which already combines family and criminal law, has five staff that serve clients from all over the Northeast.
The CEO added his organization’s looking at ways to improve what they do in a high-quality, cost-effective way. He wrote there are plans to introduce a telephone-based application program that will eventually be able to take calls from across the province.
“That should enable people, whose resources do not permit them to easily travel to apply for legal aid at a court point or a local office, to call free of charge to apply,” he wrote. “Operationally, that should shift some of the workload from local offices, letting support staff undertake other work with fewer interruptions.”
Deb Hopkins, the vice-president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 1949, which represents legal aid workers, said she’s concerned there’s plans to farm out more legal aid tasks to private workers and that legal aid isn’t being resourced properly.
“As soon as somebody retires or leaves, the positions aren’t filled. We’re working harder and harder than we ever have before and we’re suffering,” she said. “The CEO has not made any effort to get extended resources for us. He’s shutting us down as far as I’m concerned.”
