Province tabs $3.4M for 19 new Crown prosecutors

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/06/2023 (1044 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba Attorney General Kelvin Goertzen is calling in reinforcements for the province’s strained prosecution service as Crown attorneys struggle with increasingly complex cases and unmanageable workloads.

On Monday, the justice minister said the province will spend $3.4 million to add 19 new prosecutors and six additional staff to the Manitoba Prosecution Services, and six new Crown counsel for the Legal Services Branch.

“These additional Crown attorneys, we believe, will help not only when it comes to the workload issues, certainly help when it comes to moving cases more quickly through the court process, but most importantly will help in getting those who are violent offenders off of our streets,” Goertzen said at an announcement across from the Law Courts Building in Winnipeg.

The new positions represent the single-largest increase to Manitoba Prosecution Services in 15 years, and will bring the total number of Crown attorneys working in the province to just over 200, Goertzen said.

An open competition to fill the new positions is underway.

The Tory MLA for Steinbach said he’s confident the new jobs will be filled, despite ongoing recruitment and retention challenges within the service and stalled labour negotiations with the Manitoba Association of Crown Attorneys.

Its collective agreement expired in March 2022, and the matter has been sent to arbitration. In April, the association filed a grievance, saying prosecutors are dangerously over-strained by large and complex caseloads.

According to the province, the current vacancy rate within the service is eight per cent and 12 per cent of its Crown attorney positions are empty, or 22 full-time equivalent positions.

Meanwhile, the province successfully filled six of seven positions for a new unit dedicated to prosecuting firearms trafficking and manufacturing cases; most of the Crown attorneys were hired internally and the six positions left vacant were filled, Goertzen said.

“We’ve had some success in getting senior attorneys come into prosecutions, often if they’re looking for a different lifestyle than what they’re doing in the private bar, but that is a challenge,” Goertzen said. “But on these 25 new positions, I have every reason to believe we’ll be successful in recruiting them.”

The justice minister said increasing the overall staffing complement will make Manitoba a more attractive destination for senior attorneys and acknowledged concerns with respect to workload.

He attributed the increased demand on staff to pressures to get cases to trial within required time frames and a rise in violent crime and arrests. “Folks knowing that they’re coming into a well-resourced prosecutions branch, I think, is part of that (human resources) strategy.”

MACA acting president Lisa Cupples said offering Crown attorneys a competitive salary is key to both recruitment and retention.

“In the meantime, we’re still losing members,” Cupples said. “It’s nice that they’ve thought of starting by adding positions to help reduce the workload in our offices, but the problem is still going to be in filling them.

“I know that they’ve run competition after competition, and many of them have failed.”

Cupples said she expects the new positions will attract the “most junior lawyers,” while the MPS has lost senior attorneys to other provinces, the private bar and the bench.

Often, salary is a main driver for senior attorneys to leave the province or consider options elsewhere, she added.

“It takes a long time for them to build up the necessary experience and knowledge and expertise to take on the most serious of cases,” she said.

“We’re still working with management to figure out what this actually means, but right now, it doesn’t appear to be an actual, helpful announcement until they can prove that they can fill (the new positions) and fill them quickly.”

Meantime, the workload grievance is still waiting to be scheduled. Cupples said it could take up to a year for arbitration to begin.

The association has invited government officials to discuss salary concerns directly with its members, Cupples said, noting the longer members go without a contract, the more morale suffers and the more difficult it is to retain and recruit attorneys.

“At this point, it seems that they’re bent on going to arbitration,” she said.

In a prepared statement, Opposition justice critic Matt Wiebe said the Progressive Conservative government left positions for Crown attorneys vacant over the past seven years to save money at the expense of public safety.

“The PCs refuse to staff the positions we already have and Manitobans know they can’t trust (Premier) Heather Stefanson’s fake promises,” Wiebe said.

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca