The team, representing 380 Crown prosecutors across the province, sent a letter to Prime Minister Jason Kenny on March 22 to address what he called a “crisis in the judiciary” and the possibility of “drastic action”. The letter to the Prime Minister was copied by Tyler Shandro and Kaycee Madu, current and former Ministers of Justice The association claims that the “chronic underfunding” of the Alberta Public Prosecutor’s Office is coming to an end and that all attempts to meet with current and former Justice Ministers have been rejected. “We have been rejected by everyone else who approached the government with authority over our working conditions,” the letter said. “The negligence of your government has forced us to consider action for work.” Alberta Justice will only say that it will continue to work with the association on its concerns. The president of the union Dallas Sopko told CBC News that he and his colleagues feel as if they have run out of options. “As far as I know, this is the first meeting of its kind in the 50 years of our club’s history,” said Sopko. “We will talk about our choices, we will receive advice, we will hear from others in other jurisdictions about their experiences of the strike and being on the brink of a strike.” The ACAA said there was a persistent and chronic shortage of prosecutors and a high rate of prosecution due to overwhelming workloads and unpaid wages. “We have seen a significant number of prosecutors leave the ACPS [Alberta Crown Prosecution Service] “for places like British Columbia and Ontario, to the extent that ACPS often looks like an agricultural team to other prosecutors,” the letter said. ACAA President Dallas Sopko believes Alberta prosecutors have run out of options. (Janice Johnston / Google Meet)
During the 2019 election campaign, Kenney promised to hire 50 new prosecutors. The ACAA said that as of March 22, there were still 37 vacancies. “This means that the government is still about 75 percent behind in this commitment three years later,” the letter said, noting that agricultural affairs were being hit particularly hard by a shortage of prosecutors and inexperienced lawyers. “Every day, junior prosecutors are involved in very serious cases, including jury trials involving sexually assaulted children with relatively little education,” the ACAA said. “It is unfounded to repeatedly replace experienced prosecutors with brand new lawyers and expect them to wear the torch.” Evan McIntyre, Edmonton’s criminal defense attorney and vice president of the Criminal Trial Lawyers’ Association, said he had noticed a significant drop in the prosecutor’s morale. “The text has been on the wall for a few years now,” McIntyre said. “This manifests itself somewhat as the exit of many senior people to other prosecutorial services.”

Thousands of criminal cases are in danger of remaining

A month ago, Shandro told the Alberta City Council that the county has no criminal court cases that run the risk of being thrown out due to unwarranted delays. Defense attorneys and prosecutors then denied the allegations. A Supreme Court ruling called Jordan sets difficult timelines for what is considered an unreasonable delay in receiving a case from the prosecution at trial. For district court cases, the schedule is 18 months, while higher courts have up to 30 months. The ACAA letter states that there are currently more than 2,000 serious and violent provincial cases that go beyond Jordan’s supposed ceiling and risk remaining, including child sexual assault, aggravated and domestic assault and domestic violence. They claim that 1,000 other district court cases beyond the category of serious and violent are also at risk. “These figures do not include the hundreds of serious and violent cases at risk at Queen’s Bench, including the killings,” the letter said. McIntyre believes this will only get worse if prosecutors start working after two years of delays caused in part by the pandemic. “The impact would be catastrophic. I think it would be incredible,” McIntyre said. “If there was action like this and further shutdowns, I think you would see a lot of people waiting months, if not years, to get their day in court.”