Legal clinic battle

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by George Maddux

In 1970 one of the province's first free legal clinics was set up on Grand Trunk in Pointe St-Charles by a young lawyer named Herbert Marx, who went on to become provincial justice minister and a Superior Court judge. Partly inspired by the clinic, now located on Centre, similar institutions sprouted up all over. Rules and a many-tiered bureaucracy were tossed together by Quebec to command organizers on the correct manner to run said organizations.

Yet the Pointe's legal clinic continued to do things their way, allowing unpaid council members to be elected by locals. They'd call the shots. Now the Commission des services juridiques du Québec is ordering the Pointe's legal clinic to start doing things their way. Director Lise Ferland has refused. "We organize services according to the needs of our own population. We apply the law as it's supposed to be applied to give most services to our community," says Ferland. "And yet the CSJ wants to force us to work their way."

Ferland says that the clinic could have its $450,000 annual budget yanked if they don't make their methods conform to provincial standards, something they're unwilling to do. The bureaucrat bringing the heat, Pierre Bélanger--frequently remembered as the PQ public security minister during the ice storm--failed to satisfy the Mirror's attempts to get a pithy quote for the end of this story.