Chris Samuel, CBA Alberta president, says the funding threat ‘holds the people of Alberta hostage’
The Canadian Bar Association rebuked Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s bid to exert more control over the province’s process for appointing judges on Thursday, telling Smith in a letter that her proposal implicitly maligns Alberta’s sitting judges and threatens to politicize the appointment process.
Signed by CBA President Bianca Kratt and CBA Alberta President Christopher Samuel, the letter was one of the latest efforts in the legal community to push back against Smith’s proposal, which the premier revealed this week by publishing a Jan. 23 letter she had sent to Prime Minister Mark Carney.
In her letter, Smith threatened to withhold funding “to support new judicial appointments” in Alberta until the federal government agreed to reform the judicial appointment process to effectively give the province more say. Smith also asked Carney to relax the bilingualism requirement for Supreme Court of Canada justices.
“If the Government of Alberta is genuinely concerned about access to justice, it should invest in court infrastructure rather than leverage funding to advance demands that are inconsistent with the Constitution,” Kratt and Samuel wrote.
“Tactics that delay or obstruct judicial appointments ultimately punish Albertans by limiting access to a properly functioning justice system.”
Federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser rejected Smith’s proposal this week, stating on Wednesday that he intends to maintain the current process, which he said is “working very well.”
Under the current process for appointing judges to the Court of King’s Bench and the Alberta Court of Appeal, a seven-member committee screens potential candidates to recommend to the federal justice minister. The committee is prohibited from considering candidates’ political perspectives. The justice minister then advises the Governor in Council, which ultimately makes appointments. The Alberta government appoints judges for the Alberta Court of Justice.
The screening committee consists of three appointees by the federal government, with a single appointee each from the provincial government, the Canadian Bar Association’s Alberta branch, the Law Society of Alberta, and Alberta’s chief justice.
Smith told Carney she wanted a four-seat special advisory committee of four “non-partisan experts,” with two seats each for the federal and Alberta governments. Court of King’s Bench and Alberta Court of Appeal candidates would then be referred to the federal and Alberta justice ministers.
Smith recommended a similar process for candidates to the Supreme Court, where Justice Sheilah Martin’s retirement this spring will leave a vacancy open for Western or Northern Canada candidates.
In a statement on Thursday, the spokesperson for Alberta's justice minister, Heather Jenkins, noted the single seat the provincial government holds on the screening committee, in contrast to the three held by the federal government.
“That is why Alberta’s government wants to work together with the federal government to identify candidates through the establishment of a Special Advisory Committee with equal membership from the Alberta and federal government,” Jenkins said.
Jenkins did not respond to a follow-up inquiry about whether the proposal intends to cut out the Canadian Bar Association’s Alberta branch, the Law Society of Alberta, and Alberta’s chief justice from the process.
Samuel, the current CBA-Alberta president, told Canadian Lawyer on Thursday that one of the association’s fundamental concerns is Smith’s “allegation that there’s something wrong or broken with the system as it exists currently.
“It’s a system that has been in place for a long time. It’s produced really excellent judges,” Samuel adds.
While Smith had argued that Canada’s judicial appointment system was an outlier internationally, pointing to processes in the US and Australia that empower state governments to appoint state judges, Samuel counters that it is an “apples to oranges” comparison.
“Speaking to the United States specifically, there are tremendous differences in how our federation is structured, as opposed to how the states’ responsibilities align with the federal government’s responsibilities in the US,” he says. “They’re just very different systems.”
Samuel adds that Smith’s threat to withhold funding until her demands are met “holds the people of Alberta hostage.” The federal government is responsible for the salaries of federally appointed judges, while the province is responsible for funding the administration of the courts.
“Because our current system of justice is already under tremendous strain from increased caseloads, a growing population, there are already severe infrastructure needs for our courthouses across the province,” Samuel says. “The implication or the threat that there would be a withholding of even more funding is very alarming, because… It’s going to deny access to the justice system for a lot of deserving Albertans who need to access that system.”
Smith’s proposal comes amid a broader push by the Alberta government to exert more control over legal affairs in the province.
This week, a legal research centre announced that virtually all of its funding for 2026 was vetoed by Alberta’s justice minister, less than a year after the province passed a law that gave the justice minister the power to nix grants administered by the Alberta Law Foundation. Under the province’s Legal Profession Act, the law foundation is responsible for issuing grants to legal organizations across the province, including those that administer legal aid.
The law foundation’s grants are not public funds, but rather derive from interest on Alberta lawyers’ trust accounts.
After the government introduced another bill that would give the justice minister authority to dictate and write bylaws for the law foundation, all 14 law foundation employees resigned in early January.
