Our Services

The TDP’s advocacy work focuses on representing Ottawa’s marginalized communities who have received tickets or fines for municipal and provincial offences. This includes charges of loitering, public consumption and other offences which tend to disproportionately affect homeless or street-involved populations. Fines imposed for provincial offences can often affect credit scores and the recipients’ future ability to find housing or seek basic services. Offences targeting homeless populations can, therefore, perpetuate poverty.

Please see our intake page with our current intake schedule and list of upcoming pop-up clinics.

For more information on the criminalization of poverty, click here.

For a more complete list of the types of offences we can assist with, click here.

The TDP focuses its education on researching the relationship between law and homelessness. Certain legislation may discriminatorily and disproportionately affect homeless populations, thereby perpetuating cycles of poverty.

The TDP partners with the University of Ottawa faculty of law to encourage the study of regulations governing or affecting homeless and street-involved populations. We believe it is important for all future lawyers to understand the root of access to justice issues.TDP also works with Pro Bono Students Canada to generate research and educate future lawyers.

Visit our Education page for further information.

The TDP’s policy work is tied to the research partnership with the University of Ottawa and Pro Bono Students Canada. By providing public commentary online and through media outlets, and by engaging with politicians in Ottawa, TDP seeks to generate policy ideas and recommend solutions to policy problems in the regulation of poverty.