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Today, our pro bono services are structured around 4 main initiatives:
1. JUSTE NORD / JUST NORTH
Juste Nord / Just North, is a partnership with the Quebec ministry of Justice and the Community Justice Center of Nunavik in Northern Quebec.
Through the Juste Nord project, we try to foster understanding, apprecia- tion, and respect for indigenous heritage. Nunavik is a vast territory that represents one-third of Quebec’s geographical area, and it is the ancestral land of the Inuit.
We have organized five on-site legal clinics in Inuit communities, often with the assistance of interpreters as the main spoken language in the communi- ties is Inuktitut. We’ve offered legal services in the areas of family law, wills and estates, road accident indemnifications, victims of criminal offences in- demnifications, employment law and workplace accidents, and various ad- ministrative claims for public pensions or other governmental benefits. The cases that shook me the most were the legal proceedings in seeking declarato- ry judgments of death for people who had gone missing or passed away and the Director of Civil Status had never been informed, and as such no death certificate had been issued, causing all sorts of issues for the heirs.
We have held over 250 legal consultations since the beginning of the project and have opened nearly 100 legal matters; we currently have about fifty ac- tive cases in Nunavik now. Our team just came back last Sunday from the latest legal clinic held in Salluit, where they met with over sixty residents of the community, facing temperatures of -35C or -31F.
2. ESPLANADE QUÉBEC AND LA PISCINE
Our second pro bono initiative is structured around partnerships with two social innova- tion accelerators located in Montreal – Espla- nade Québec and La Piscine. They support start-up businesses and organizations tackling social, cultural, and environmental issues with their business projects, and we provide legal services to help such entrepreneurs structure their business, and legal advice in employ- ment law, intellectual property and regarding various contractual questions. As an example, our team recently helped a startup business whose business model is to make menstrual products accessible in the workplace as an em- ployer benefit; another example is an entre- preneur who worked to save the old costumes of the television productions of CBC/Radio- Canada, that were going to be destroyed, but were saved and are now available for rental via a non-profit organization named the Great Costume Designer.
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