Crown attorneys say Manitoba government isn't addressing urgent needs as lawyers walk away from labour talks
CBC
The organization representing Crown attorneys in Manitoba walked away from labour talks with the province on Friday, after it said government officials did not bring real resources to the table to address prosecutor burnout.
The Manitoba Association of Crown Attorneys (MACA) filed a grievance in April 2023, calling on the province to address "dangerously heavy caseloads" by increasing pay and recruiting more prosecutors.
After two and a half years, that grievance was set to go to arbitration earlier this week.
Ben Wickstrom, MACA's vice president of prosecutions and spokesperson for the group, says they didn't return to mediation meetings on Friday morning.
"We weren't making real progress. Ultimately, we knew that continuing it wasn't going to get us anywhere that would be acceptable to us and our members. So we decided to disengage," Wickstrom said.
He said he couldn't share Crown attorneys' specific tasks with CBC News, but said they were seeking "real resources on a very urgent basis" to ease the workload pressures prosecutors have been facing for years.
He said Crown lawyers' workloads have become even more challenging in the years since MACA filed its grievance with the previous Progressive Conservative government.
The introduction of body-worn cameras has increased the amount of material attorneys need to review, Wickstrom said, while proposed changes to the federal Criminal Code are expected to lead to harsher sentences and more contested bail hearings.
"Ultimately, it means Crown attorneys are spending more time in the courtroom fighting things out and advocating for the Crown's position. You need more Crowns to do that. It really is the bottom line," he said.
Yet MACA claims that retention is a serious issue in the province, as Manitoba Justice continues to lose experienced Crown attorneys to other provinces like Ontario and B.C., where resources and pay may be higher.
In a statement to CBC News, Justice Minister Matt Wiebe said the NDP government has hired 35 new Crown prosecutors and "significantly increased their pay."
However, Wickstrom said those 35 prosecutors are hardly new. He said the government hasn't created any new jobs because the recent hires are simply backfilling existing positions that were left vacant by Crown prosecutors that left.
"Certainly there's a recruitment and retention problem," he said, adding that the increased pay the minister pointed to was the result of an arbitration decision in February 2024.
That decision saw Crown prosecutors awarded a five-year deal with just under 14 per cent of total wage increases, retroactive to 2022. That deal extends until next March.
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