Alberta defence lawyers protest outside Calgary, Edmonton courts

A group of Alberta’s criminal defence lawyers protested outside of the courts in Calgary and Edmonton Friday morning, for a 90-minute demonstration in an ongoing wage dispute with the Province.

Lawyers escalated job action Thursday over the amount of compensation paid by Legal Aid Alberta.

Four organizations representing lawyers in Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer and southern Alberta began job action on Aug. 8, by refusing to accept certain bail and duty counsel files from legal aid.

Kelsey Sitar, a practicing lawyer and a vice president of the Criminal Defence Lawyer’s Association in Calgary, says the government of Alberta has not properly funded the legal aid system for decades.

“That’s the system that helps low-income individuals who need assistance from a lawyer, whether that’s with a family matter, or a criminal matter — immigration,” Sitar explained. “In 2018, a new governance agreement was negotiated, and the government — which was the NDP at that time — recognized that there had been chronic underfunding and the system was in serious jeopardy.”

A demonstration by Alberta’s criminal defence lawyers on September 2, 2022 in Calgary, Alberta. (Nick Blakeney, CityNews photo)

A demonstration by Alberta’s criminal defence lawyers on September 2, 2022 in Calgary, Alberta. (Nick Blakeney, CityNews photo)

A demonstration by Alberta’s criminal defence lawyers on September 2, 2022 in Calgary, Alberta. (Lisa Grant, CityNews photo)

The NDP government committed to “significant funding boosts” that would have addressed the problems, but Sitar says the current UCP government has not honoured those agreements.

“They (the UCP government) continued to deliver less and less money until this past year, when they actually delivered less money to Legal Aid Alberta than we had before the 2018 governance agreement,” Sitar said. “So not only are we in as bad of a situation — we’re in a worse situation now.

“For defence lawyers, we are often the biggest line item on the Legal Aid financials — and that’s not because we make good money, it’s because we are the largest service provider that they use in their system. And we’ve had enough. We have been not only watching people who need our services and can’t afford to pay for them be told they make too much money, to the point where we have an ‘escape clause’ for people who are on AISH, because they make too much money. And it’s insane.”

Sitar adds that Legal Aid Alberta has lost several junior lawyers because the wages they make are so low. She’s seen lawyers move to another province where they can make as much as double what they make in Alberta, change their area of practice, or join the Crown attorney’s office.

Sitar says several organizations that support the recent job action from defence lawyers have also recognized the problems with Legal Aid Alberta. She says this is the first time lawyers in the province have protested the government’s lack of funding.

“I’ve never seen my colleagues band together like this before, I’ve never seen this be the sentiment — people being so committed,” Sitar said

“They don’t care if they have to stop taking every single Legal Aid file to get the government to pay attention, they will do it.”

Lawyers at the protest in Calgary say they do not want to be demonstrating, they would rather be doing their jobs, however, they also need to think about their families. Sitar says criminal defence lawyers are just like everyone else in the province, they have mouths to feed and bills to pay, and the current wages are not cutting it.

“I could have a former client get arrested tomorrow on a very serious charge, and I’m going to have to say to them, I can’t help you right now,” Sitar said.

Justice Minister Tyler Shandro told The Canadian Press nothing is going to be done until a review of the Legal Aid Alberta administrative system is complete.

“It’s going to be done in October, so it’s not like it’s going to be that far into the future,” Shandro said. “The advice that I’ve been given is that it would actually undermine that review if we were to quickly make a change to the tariff right now.”

Submissions for the 2023 budget usually begin in October and November, he said.

“We’re not saying no to reviewing the tariff — we can do that,” Shandro said. “It just has to be done after the review that legal aid is doing right now.”

Shandro said the government is monitoring the effects of the job action.

“We’ve been watching to see if there are any effects and if there are any ways in which someone’s access to justice is being impeded,” he said.

“Legal Aid has the funding that they need to be able to make sure that people have the legal services that they require.”

CityNews has reached out to the government for comment on the Friday morning protests.

–With files from The Canadian Press