翻譯：ill afford to

ill 作為副詞，其一個意思就是：困難的；幾乎不的意思
如yahoo字典也有一例：
2. 困難地;幾乎不
I can ill afford the time.
我花不起這個時間。

所以，We can ill afford to wait until a law is in place-that attitude has to change.

我們很難等到法例生效－這種態度必須改變

希望幫到你！

We can ill afford to wait until a law is in place - that attitude has to change.
We can ill afford = we can badly afford = we cannot afford anymore
a law is in place = we have a law
that attitude in this sentence should be referring to a passive attitude, that is, people do not try to stop something bad and just wait for the government to put up a law against that bad thing.
So the meaning the sentence is :
We cannot afford to wait until we have a law – that attitude has to change (and we have to do something by ourselves first)

ill afford to - grammar:
ill = adverb
afford = verb
afford to = phrasal verb