BC's Top Employers (2025) Magazine - Flipbook - Page 58
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BC’S TOP EMPLOYERS (2025)
Legal Aid BC helps clients navigate major challenges
J
ean 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.
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. I
love being part of that.
— Jean Reyes
Navigator
Legal Aid BC commits to doing meaningful work, helping clients of all backgrounds struggling to navigate the
legal system.
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
