PLANC

Vision Statement

Access to justice requires access to poverty law services for all poor people living in Canada. Poverty law services are those that enable poor people and marginalized communities to advance legal interests and protections for their most fundamental needs, such as housing, food and income security. Communities define and assert their own legal needs through community control over poverty law services.

Poverty law services provide poor people and marginalized communities with:

• education and tools for defining and asserting their own legal needs
• access to quality legal representation and assistance to address important legal wrongs and claim important legal rights, and
• broad remedies for systemic legal problems detrimentally impacting particular groups of poor people.

Core Values

• local community control over poverty law services
• linking communities of interest
• a comprehensive and integrated approach to meeting needs of poor and otherwise marginalized people

Mission

To create a national network of poverty law advocates, community workers and their supporters to promote our common vision of poverty law services and ensure equitable access across Canada.