Defence lawyers associations to stop taking all Legal Aid files starting Sept. 26

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Bluesky
• Share on X
• Copy Link

Lawyers announced their latest move Thursday afternoon, then held in-person press conferences outside courthouses around the province, including in Red Deer.

bev toews

Alberta NDP tout first non-incumbent candidate

4h ago

April 16-17

Lacombe Police looking into vehicle thefts in Maple Bay and Par Court

4h ago

taken april 18 from outside tradeshow

Lacombe Police seeking stolen Cadillac

4h ago

“The criminal justice system cannot function and access to justice in Alberta cannot occur without our participation, as all stakeholders already recognize,” the associations say in a joint statement.

“Unfortunately, Justice Minister Tyler Shandro has decided to ignore the fact that Alberta’s courts cannot properly function when his government cuts off help for our most vulnerable citizens and refuses to offer fair compensation to skilled professionals for their services.”

It’s also stated that members are small business owners who employ many Albertans and support a vital segment of the economy.

“We have worked hard like other such Albertans to gain the experience necessary to provide superior services to our clients. As your representative, Minister Shandro could choose stability, sustainability, and a fair system. Instead, he chooses chaos. Sadly, it is a choice that will cost Albertans far more in the end,” they say.

“When Minister Shandro is interested in speaking to us in good faith to allow the justice system to get back to serving taxpayers effectively and efficiently, we are available. Until then, Legal Aid Alberta has lost overnight a large, diverse and irreplaceable workforce. We will no longer silently support this government’s dysfunctional idea of justice.”

In a new statement, Justice Minister Tyler Shandro says Increases to the legal aid tariff, which is the rate that criminal defence lawyers are paid for legal aid work, will be considered as part of the 2023 Budget.

“Legal Aid Alberta (LAA) and officials in Justice have begun this work, and if there is evidence to support increasing the rate paid to criminal defence lawyers, it will be included in the 2023 Budget submission,” said Shandro in a statement to rdnewsNOW. “John Panusa, CEO of LAA has publicly stated that they have all required funding necessary to ensure uninterrupted access to justice.”

In the shadow of Red Deer’s new Justice Centre nearby, Jason Snider, President, RDCDLA, told local reporters Friday morning that this is a case of neglect and underfunding that has gone on for years.

“We’ve been trying to engage with the government and they just haven’t engaged with us,” laments Snider. “They don’t want to listen to us. They refer to us as vendors and we just provide a service. Well we provide a service, but we provide 1,200 lawyers who provide service to clients across Alberta, and that is Legal Aid.”

Snider anticipates significant impacts to the province’s justice system if the government fails to address their concerns, noting that a couple of hundred new cases roughly, enter the local court system every month.

“The system is going to bog down very quickly and you’re going to see disadvantaged Albertans become more disadvantaged because Legal Aid and the government, mostly the government, is just not willing to address the issues that we brought up, that we provided them the evidence for and why it needs to change,” adds Snider.

“The solution is for the government to step up and make an immediate change in how they compensate lawyers and we’ve given the figures,” says Snider. “If they step forward and say here’s the money to change the level of compensation, an interim change that is a gesture of good faith, and then an announcement of an actual process to do a more comprehensive change, we’ll go back to work, we’ll start accepting the roster certificates again.”

Snider says it’s important to note that defence lawyers also employ other support staff and operate as small businesses.

“We’ve been squeezed to the point where its not viable to continue to do Legal Aid work,” he explains. ” They haven’t changed the rates of compensation since 2015, the inflation rate since then has been considerable, obviously all of our costs have gone up, our rate of compensation has remained static, and its to the point where lawyers are just saying, I just can’t do this anymore.”

Meantime, Alberta’s Opposition NDP is calling the row a, “profound failure of the justice system, and will lead to a cascade of further failures as large numbers of Albertans attempt to navigate the justice system without representation.”

“All Albertans who have business before the courts, including victims and their families, will suffer as a result of the delays and dismissals that will follow,” says Irfan Sabir, Justice Critic.

“This is entirely the fault of UCP Justice Minister Tyler Shandro, who has botched his file yet again. Shandro ignored repeated warnings that the Legal Aid system was collapsing, and [this] news is the result of his failure to act.”

Sabir is urging Shandro to meet with the four organizations immediately, and to negotiate in good faith, a way it can pay arrears owed to Legal Aid under a 2018 agreement.