In his article on Wednesday, Cam Fortems wrote: "Dundee said the society has not been open in its accounting...." While I do not criticize Mr. Fortems for paraphrasing me in that manner, the statement does leave an impression I would like to correct.

I was not suggesting that LSS is cooking the books, or that they do not fulfil their financial obligations as a society. I may have problems with their judgment at times, but not with their accounting practices.

For example, they say they had to close the Kamloops office to save money. The last I looked, Kamloops office space is a lot cheaper than downtown Vancouver. Did they consider other options? We don’t know. We weren’t consulted. We haven’t seen the numbers – and what numbers we have seen don’t make any sense.

LSS said they had to cut overhead or cut services. They said the office closures saved $1.6 million. Yet when our job action started, they announced $5 million in new and restored services.

They say our concerns about the call centre and local agents are "anecdotal" and that they have statistics to the contrary. We have not seen these statistics. All we have is our experience and that of our clients.

It is in this context that I said — and still say — that LSS is not being as open as we would like.

Mark Twain said it best: There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

DAVID DUNDEE

Kamloops Legal Aid Tariff Lawyers committee