[LINK] "Ontario legal aid vows to ‘weed out’ bad refugee lawyers"

[rfmcdonald]

Metro Toronto carries a Torstar News Service on the subject of the much-belated need to save refugees in Ontario from incompetent lawyers. I've read elsewhere that this is particularly a problem for Roma fleeing central Europe, but I'm sure other groups are also vulnerable.

Torstar News Service Raoul Boulakia of the Refugee Lawyers Association of Ontario says his members have been asking for years that "the minority who represent people negligently be removed from Legal Aid."

Ontario legal aid is set to launch a new system to “vet and weed out” bad refugee lawyers in order to ensure asylum seekers receive quality representation.

After two years of consultations, the body that administers the province’s legal aid program will start screening lawyers representing refugee claimants based on their experience, expertise and records if they want to get paid to do asylum cases.

The reform — part of an initiative to assure the quality of government-funded legal services that will extend to other areas of law practices — arises from ongoing concerns over poor representation of the most vulnerable by some lawyers in jeopardizing legitimate refugees’ claims for protection.

“We are going to have a new set of quality standards for refugee lawyers. It’s going to be a more rigorous system to police and monitor compliance standards,” said Andrew Brouwer, acting senior counsel of legal aid’s immigration and refugee law section.