Legal Aid BC helps clients navigate major challenges

Jean Reyes’ first experience with Legal Aid BC (LABC) was two years ago, when he arrived at its doors as a refugee claimant from the Dominican Republic. LABC provides legal information, advice and representation to people living in B.C. with low incomes, and Reyes badly needed its expert help in navigating Canadian immigration law.

A year later, Reyes began paying it forward. “My experience with LABC in securing permanent resident status was great,” Reyes says. “And during it, I felt something inside – that if I get through this successfully, if I make it, I really want to help other people like LABC helped me.”

He became one of the Crown corporation’s first 12 navigators, a position designed to better help its clients, many of whom are poor and living with mental illness, addiction or trauma, come through a complex legal system with the best possible outcomes.

“For me it’s an honour, but also a big responsibility,” says Reyes, who specializes in immigrant and refugee cases. “There are language barriers, clients don’t have work permits yet, most came without any money, some are homeless – we have to take them out of that situation as we go through the legal issues.”

It’s work that would be much harder to perform, Reyes says, without LABC’s supportive workplace culture. “The teamwork among the navigators is wonderful, and we have great communication with our managers – we can tell them anything, and they’ll help with anything that we need.”

“Everyone at Legal Aid BC is working tirelessly to help the people out there who need it, and to support us while we’re helping them,” says Reyes. “I love being part of that.”

For LABC’s vice-president, legal strategy, Rhaea Bailey, it’s vital that people doing meaningful work do so in a supportive environment. “A navigator has to be somebody who understands how to walk beside other people, understands how difficult it is for people to make big life decisions in traumatic moments, and who also understands the system,” she says.

Bailey, who took up her current position in January 2024 after she returned from parental leave, is tasked with helping LABC implement its revised strategic vision. “Now, one of our primary goals is better outcomes for clients and figuring out how we do that alongside engaged employees, collaborative relationships and a culture of truth, reconciliation, equity, diversity, and inclusion,” says Bailey, a Métis mother of two young children.

“We are looking for ways to provide a more holistic service to clients because we realize that people are not just the sum of their legal issues – addressing things like housing can actually help resolve some of their legal matters.”

For LABC employees, that vision means solid health benefits, a defined-benefit pension plan and a hybrid workplace model that leverages office hoteling. “It’s just what it sounds like,” says Bailey. “Our people come in and, depending on their roles, utilize designated workplaces for the time they are in the office on a first-come basis. It’s a good way to create cross-collaboration among teams, allows us to reduce our carbon footprint and saves financial resources that we can now use for other service or employment enhancements.”

It all adds up, Bailey concludes. “Like everyone here, at the end of the day I feel like I make a difference in people’s lives. That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning, and LABC helps me feel that way because of the way that we support one another.”

This article appeared in the magazine announcing this year's BC’s Top Employers winners, published February 11, 2025 in the Vancouver Sun. This article was prepared with the financial support of the employer, which reviewed but did not write its contents.