The new deal comes months after tense back-and-forth between the parties
Two months after Legal Aid Alberta said it would have to cease operations due its inability to reach a new governance agreement with the Alberta government, the two parties and the Law Society of Alberta have signed a five-year deal.
LAA’s operations have been governed by an agreement between the three parties since 2002. The last governance deal expired on June 30 but was extended to Sept. 5 to accommodate negotiations between the parties. The Alberta government announced the new agreement on Wednesday.
“We continue to respect that the Government of Alberta has a critical role to ensure fiscal responsibility,” LAA board chair Ryan Callioux said in a statement. “Strengthening legal aid will include ongoing conversations that involve the parties to this agreement and our funders, stakeholders and partners, with a commitment to supporting the legal needs of Albertans.”
Mickey Amery, Alberta minister of justice and attorney general, said, “The provision of legal aid services in Alberta is a shared commitment and one that all the groups involved take very seriously.
“Our goal is to ensure the sustainability and fiscal accountability of legal aid for all Albertans now and into the future, and this new agreement puts us on the right track,” he added.
The new agreement guarantees about $110 million in funding for the LAA over the next year, the Alberta government said, adding legal aid is funded by the provincial government, the federal government, and the Alberta Law Foundation.
The agreement also includes provisions for ongoing talks between the parties of the governance agreement and other legal stakeholders “that will guide the future direction of legal aid services and funding,” the Alberta government said.
Wednesday’s deal comes after a year of tense negotiations between the Alberta government and the LAA. Days before the last agreement was set to expire in late June, Malcolm Lavoie, Deputy Minister of Justice of Alberta’s governing United Conservative Party, declined to renew the deal and proposed a new framework for legal aid funding.
Lavoie’s proposed deal would have excluded the Law Society of Alberta as a party and expired in one year, with the province retaining the right to terminate the deal without cause with 30 days’ written notice. The deal also would have given the justice minister the discretion to withhold and adjust LAA funding and subjected the LAA to strict requirements for how it used its funds.
The LAA called the proposed deal “untenable” and announced it would be forced to stop operating. The parties then agreed to extend the expired agreement to facilitate further talks.
