South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario

General information

The movement to create SALCO was started by a group of volunteers who noticed a real need for culturally and linguistically appropriate legal services for low-income South Asians. Since 1999, volunteers and staff worked tirelessly to find a way to fund a legal clinic dedicated to serving the South Asian community.

SALCO was run as a volunteer clinic from 1999 to 2001 by South Asian lawyers and activists. From 2001 onwards, it began receiving periodic project funding from Legal Aid Ontario to provide services through a lawyer and community legal worker. It also received funding from the Law Foundation of Ontario, who supported the vision of a permanent legal clinic.

With tremendous community support, and the hard work and dedication on volunteer lawyers, activists, and SALCO's limited staff, the organization was successful in receiving permanent funding as a legal clinic in 2007 from Legal Aid Ontario. In 2007, SALCO became the newest clinic to be funded in the province of Ontario. The demand for SALCO services continues to grow.

DID YOU KNOW?
The South Asian community is the fastest growing visible minority group in Toronto (growing by 40% since 1996). Making this city, as the CBC notes, "the largest [South Asian] diaspora in the western hemisphere".

By the year 2017, more than one million South Asians will call Toronto home.

With an estimated 56% of Canada's South Asians living in Toronto in the next decade, South Asians will comprise the largest concentration of a specific group in any of Canada's largest metropolitan areas. South Asians are the largest visible minority group in Ontario. The population of South Asians in the GTA is or exceeds the population of most cities in Ontario.

At the same time, studies show that a large percentage of the South Asian community live in impoverished circumstances, falling into the low-income category. Studies also show that racialized communities, like the South Asian community, are more likely to fall into poverty based on systemic barriers like racism.

34.6% of South Asian families in Toronto live below the Statistics Canada Low Income Cut Off. Among this group, more than 50% of all Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan and Tamil families are living in poverty.

DISCLAIMER:
The views and opinions expressed on SALCO social media sites and links to other Internet resources do not necessarily represent those of SALCO. We are not responsible for the accuracy, currency or reliability of information posted by external parties.

While SALCO strives to make the information on our social media sites as timely and accurate as possible, we make no claims, promises or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of the contents of these sites, and expressly disclaim liability for errors and omissions in the contents of these sites.

SALCO makes use of social media to engage the community it engages with and serves and to contribute to relevant conversations regarding our work and communities we serve. No communication to SALCO through its social media platforms shall be deemed to constitute legal or official notice for any purpose. Posts and/or links to other sites do not constitute legal advice.

While SALCO makes reasonable efforts to monitor and moderate content posted on our social media platforms, SALCO does not moderate all comments at all times and may not respond immediately to online requests. SALCO reserves the sole right to review, edit and/or delete any comments deemed inappropriate. Comments including, but not limited to, the following may be deleted or edited if deemed inappropriate or irrelevant by the moderator(s):
• Abusive or hurtful comments about a user or another participant;
• Off-topic and redundant comments (this includes promotion or solicitation of events, groups, pages, websites, organizations, products and programs not related to or affiliated with SALCO and spam);
• Comments that use profanity, foul language, abusive language or "hate speech";
• Private, personal information published without consent;
• Personal attacks or defamatory statements or comments;
• Plagiarized material or material that potentially violates intellectual property rights;
• Comments that violate the privacy of any individual;
• Advertisements and business solicitations; and
• Material that is unlawful, obscene, defamatory, threatening, harassing, abusive, slanderous, hateful or embarrassing to any person or entity as determined by SALCO.

Reference to a website or service is for information purposes only and does not constitute endorsement or recommendation by SALCO. Any third-party linked sites are not under the control of SALCO, and we are not responsible for the contents of any linked website.