Interview with Omar Ha-Redeye

David Milosevic

Good afternoon, Omar. Thank you so much for joining the OBA Civil Litigation Section today.

Omar Ha-Redeye

Thank you for having me.

David Milosevic

It's our pleasure. We're hoping to get a little bit of information from you as someone who's on the ground, dealing with access to justice issues as part of our continuing series on access to justice and the effects of the pandemic and court modernization on that access. As part of a background, Omar, could you tell me a little bit about your role at the Durham Community Legal Clinic?

Omar Ha-Redeye

I'd be happy to, David. So I am the executive director at the Durham Community Legal Clinic. The clinic has been around since 1985, so we just celebrated our 35th anniversary. We serve the entirety of Durham region. So that's everywhere from Pickering, all the way east to Bowmanville and all the way up to Lake Scugog. So it's a very large catchment area that is both urban and rural and with many different and diverse populations. Our focus of course, is with the low income population in Durham region, of which we can find many different types. So the main issues that we focus on in terms of legal issues, generally tend to be things like Landlord and Tenant Board, social benefit's tribunal, employment law, human rights, WSIB. And then we also do some other areas like small claims and family law triage even and consumer law and acts as a justice hub. So we have some partnerships in the community that allow us to do a little bit more.