West Toronto Community Legal Services - Toronto, Ontario

AyyA M.

I had a wonderful experience today with Jeremy, the student case manager at West Toronto Community Legal Services, and his amazing supervisor. Jeremy was very respectful, kind, and intelligent — someone who truly made me feel heard and supported. His supervisor was also incredibly professional and compassionate. I’m so grateful for the time and effort they both gave me. Thank you so much!

Loyal L.

No other choice but to call the MP about this location and the employees, who are getting free tax payers money. Employees of this location have zero moral values, and zero understanding. Zero professionalism. How enjoyable is it to take more than 1 hour lunch brake, meanwhile a person outside has no place to live and hungry, and waiting outside these amoral people's office or for their return call. WOW shame on you.

Anonymous H.

Don't ever trust this place to help in any legal matters. Nothing but incompetent and pretenders. After almost 2 months of having conversation on the phone and in person with these incompetent people, they took all the information about my situation with my landlord, and after having some hope, I received a call from another incompetent person, who calls herself a lawyer, and she just gave me a stupid solution and just dismissed my case. The only things they do is sending resources, which does not help at all. This place is playing games with very vulnerable people, who seek help, and at the end they dump the person with few garbage words, which makes no sense. These incompetent people from the secretary to the management are all scam artists. DO NOT TRUST THESE PEOPLE

Jamiyla L.

They’re really uninterested in helping you, as far as tenants rights and knowing your options the FMTA Tenant hotline is way better as a resource if you need help or reassurance about your rights. They can’t give legal advice but this west Toronto paralegal service probably won’t represent you anyway. Pretty rude, want to get you off the phone as soon as possible, complete lack of empathy for your situation, will send you links to LTB forms you’ve likely seen before and say you have little chance against your landlord. Look elsewhere, seriously.

Gabriela C.

Disappointing and biased. Need help fighting Landlord Evictions and CRA CRB reassessments, accumulating in over $22,000 of debt on top of another $30,000 of debt from covid, and living in a single-income household, living paycheck to paycheck. But according to them, my salary of less than $60,000 a YEAR is more than enough to be able to hire a lawyer out of pocket, despite our current eocnomic crisis and living in a single household. Meaning any legal aid is out of the option. The fact that they think I can afford $400 per hour legal services on my salary is ignorant, heartless and borderline fascist.

Lunar E.

I recommend this place and I appreciate their service . I had a great service from a kind and professional lady called Helle Hulgaard she did her best and I was fully satisfied with her service ... You need to know that all the workers there are respectful and they are happy to assist you and you feel comfortable dealing with them as if you knew them from long time ... I wish them all the best ... 5 stars not enough for them !!

Laure N.

Today I am actually homeless BECAUSE of them. So much shame upon their social workers. There is NO safety for abuse survivors here

Edit: With that said, this is one of the rare instances when an organization is suffering under bad management, quite the opposite. Elisabeth is a modern Atlas holding the problems of an entire community and abysmal funding to correct them. What she has managed to achieve in spite of these obstacles is remarkable and she deserves her flowers.

From my direct experiences, some of people who report to her and face the community more directly simply ride the coattails of the good reputation she has worked hard over many decades to earn WCTLS. It is an unfortunate truth as a survivor of institutions (the province of Ontario certainly among them) that when the cat’s away, the mice will play.

The only way WCTLS could improve is if they became genuinely receptive to client feedback. We aren’t all bitter little narcs you know — in fact this one at least has identical visions for the outcomes of every vulnerable community member, and how we would like their experiences navigating systems to go. Centre us.

L B.

HUGE shoutout to Maggie for her help today! Helping me figure out I am not eligible for your clinic's assistance saved me a lot of time and energy so much appreciated! - from a fellow "receptionist" 🙂