Love Toronto is a non-profit charitable organization established in 2016 by MilAl church. We aim to help and take care of Korean immigrants suffering with settling in Canada. Following our vision, we are offering any necessary assistance for Korean community as we named it “Love Toronto”. We are operating four main programs which may not be found from other Korean charitable organizations: Medical Consultation, Psychotherapeutic Counseling, Legal Counseling, and ADP. Those medical consultation, psychotherapeutic counseling, and legal counseling programs are provided through the efforts of volunteering professionals. In doing so, it is possible for Love Toronto to provide exceptional services.

Medical service in Canada is quite different from Korea as it starts from an appointment with a family doctor or walk-in clinic.
Your family doctor or walk-in doctor will have a consultation session with you, and may request for additional exams such as blood test, X-rays, CT, MRI, cancer test, or transfer you to specialists as needed. Your doctor can also prescribe medications when required.
You can still go to a walk-in clinic for a doctor even if you do not have any medical insurance. You will have to pay for the consultation, and cost may be more expensive than you think.
We have two volunteering family doctors for a medical consultation, and they diagnose patients, prescribe medications, and transfer to other specialists for additional examinations.
Also, our volunteering radiologist with a portable UT scanner provides great help for pregnant and patients who need imaging examinations.

It is available either on Saturday and Sunday morning, or Sunday afternoon at our office, because they are currently working in their fields and volunteering for Love Toronto on weekends.
Prescribed medication or imaging examinations may charge you a lot. Are they all free with your medical consultation program?

There are some drug benefit programs for seniors and children in Canada, but adults need to pay for their prescribed medications unless they have any benefit from their insurances.
The Ontario health insurance program covers blood/urine tests or imaging with free of charge, but you must pay on your own if you do not have the insurance.
The examination fees may vary, but it usually can be done within $50 – $60 for blood/urine tests.
Because imaging examination fees are very expensive, we are providing an UT scan with our radiologist instead, but patients may be requested for additional imaging examination only when it is necessary. In this case, those additional examinations will be done outside of our office and the patient needs to pay for examination fees.

That will be the most difficult situation for us to help as it can happen for a patient going to an emergency without any health insurance or private insurance. It is against the law in Canada to send a patient back just because of being uninsured. When leaving the hospital, however, the hospital bills patients get charged can be thousands of dollars or more. The hospital asks the patient to sign on a payment plan form if the patient cannot pay for the bill before leaving.
One thing you need to make sure before going to hospital is that you must know the effective date of your insurance starting cover your medical expenses when you purchase private insurance.
The insurance policy varies with its effective date that may not exactly be the same as your date of purchase.
We actually had a few inquiries from some patients who got into financial trouble because of their new private insurances not covering any of their medical expenses.

Until starting the medical consultation program, we did not realize either that there are a lot more people than we expected having no medical insurance.
Some common situations having no medical insurance are: when one is a visitor, international student, family member of international student, has a work permit but not currently having a full-time job, working as a holiday worker, waiting for a renewal on status, or remaining in Canada beyond the validity of the status.
Due to these kinds of reasons, we do have seen some patients who had not met a doctor for more than 20 years.
There are also many international students entering Canada without international student insurance even though it is mandatory.
These are especially the students going to private language centres.
For those of Koreans who have difficulties to have medical services are probably holding temporary resident status. It is because it charges you lots of money to see a doctor without having an appropriate insurance, and you may get charged even more when you need additional examinations.

It should be your priority to know where and what kinds of resources are available out there for you when you face some legal issues such as housing, family, employment, or an accident.
And helping people who got involved in those urgent legal issues are what we are pursuing through our Legal Counsel referral Program.
Our attorneys and paralegals for the Legal Counsel referral Program can suggest detailed guidelines on the process and steps you should take.
You will get replies from our lawyers by an email, a phone, or a private 1:1 consultation once your questions regarding your case are submitted through “request consultation ” on our website. Your inquiries will be transferred to lawyers through Love Toronto.
It is against the law for an attorney to consult both sides of a case, which can happen when you seek as many as attorneys you can talk to, and therefore it is important to send us good information on both sides when contacting us.

We assume there must be a lot of immigrants with mental health issues that emerge from stresses, but hesitating to meet a counselor or psychiatrist due to cultural differences.
Love Toronto works together with four registered psychotherapists to provide a Psychotherapeutic Counseling Referral Program with discounted price. We interconnect counselors and counselee once we receive applications from patients.
In case a patient is registered with an insurance from school or workplace, counseling fee may be covered by the insurance.
We also financially support a part of the counseling fee for those who have no medical insurance or budget.
All members, staff, and patients are engaged for our Psychotherapeutic Counseling Program with responsibility and therefore leading to positive outcomes.

Yes, they are Korean volunteers professional in their fields coming forward with their specialized knowledge and skills.

Rather than the number of results we have made, we think our distinct characteristics on our programs compared to other organizations are the best achievement.
It is very hard to manage all the demands from people seeking help through our program.
We are very proud of our achievements as we are filling up Korean community in Canada by offering specialized programs that are not found from other organizations, and therefore we are able to help people in need.

MilAl church is currently our main sponsor as we mentioned above, but our goal is to become a financially independent organization.
Your support will be a great help to operate Love Toronto as our programs are not quite entitled for subsidy from the government of Canada yet.
We have added an online-donation page on our newly structured Love Toronto website.
We happily look forward to your kind support for our community.