Lawyer walkout could be back on table

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This article was published 27/01/2020 (1697 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After private criminal defence lawyers in Manitoba narrowly avoided a walkout that would have seen them refuse to appear in bail courts over a legal-aid pay dispute, job action could be back on the table.

Defence lawyers are set to meet Wednesday, and they could reconsider a decision earlier this month to call off a previously planned job action in exchange for a meeting with the justice minister, said Gerri Wiebe, president of the Criminal Defence Lawyers Association of Manitoba.

The justice department’s handling of the release of a provincially-commissioned review of Legal Aid has come across as an attempt to stall the association as it pushes for its first legal-aid pay raise in 12 years, Wiebe said.

“The timing of the report is really, quite frankly, quite disappointing to us,” she said.

The long-awaited report by lawyer Allan Fineblit looked into the inner workings of Legal Aid Manitoba and recommended an overhaul of the tariff system that currently sets the pay rates for private lawyers who do legal aid work. The report was submitted to the government in December 2018, but it wasn’t released until Monday — the same day Justice Minister Cliff Cullen sat down with Wiebe and private lawyers.

Cullen’s office released a statement regarding the report late Tuesday:

“The report affects numerous stakeholders in the justice system, so it was made available at the same time to all interested parties when it was released Monday.

“We recognize this report would need to be reviewed by the Legal Aid Management Council as it could represent a fairly significant shift in how Legal Aid Manitoba might operate in the future. New appointees to the management council were made in December, and this report has since been shared with them for review and outreach to affected stakeholders, including the Criminal Defence Lawyers Association of Manitoba.”

Wiebe said the minister acknowledged the tariff fees are out of date, but wouldn’t discuss the pay-raise issue with them until the lawyers had time to review Fineblit’s report. The report wasn’t provided to them in advance, Wiebe said, even though she’d been asking for a copy since July.

“On a personal level, I’m quite frustrated, because I think I was very clear that we had suspended job action in good faith that the minister would come to the table and have a meaningful conversation with us, and it seems like he actively thwarted our ability to have a meaningful conversation by releasing the report when and how he did. And that’s disappointing,” Wiebe said.

On Jan. 10, about 150 private defence lawyers decided to stop representing all clients in bail courts across the province for one week beginning Jan. 13.

They wanted a meeting with the justice minister over rates of pay, which are set under legislation and haven’t been updated since 2008 — the last time they went on strike. The job action was called off before it began, after Cullen agreed to meet with the lawyers. 

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay

REVIEW OF LEGAL AID MANITOBA