While entering the court, there should be no bowing in front of the judges. They aren't God. Certain cultures forbid this or any bending or bowing to any Human being, irrespective of their world status. Why do we still use these outdated practices from the stone age?

Mr. Dustin Tkachuk recently raised a good point on a discussion board.

Many of us perhaps turn down files based solely on who the other lawyer is and the potential impact on mental health.

The general observation I have is this. If a lawyer is breaching code of conduct issues in a non-financial way, the law society is slow to act, and also actively encourages raising matters only when a matter is completed to “avoid a sideshow”.

There is not really any good mechanism to address lawyer conduct in the courts. A court’s test to remove a lawyer isn’t whether that lawyer is causing you distress.

I don’t have a solution, but some brainstorming can happen.

-like PAS should lawyers be required to file something about their commitment to behaviour at the outset of a file?
- should their be an automatic application process where both lawyers are removed from a file if they are unable to work together, regardless of the cause?
-or maybe a process where you can “review a play” like in hockey. A process where you can “tax” a lawyer’s behaviour on a file. If you succeed, there is something granted to you, like costs payable by the lawyer. If you lose, you pay.
-mandatory litigation plans filed at the outset of a file?

From the Payee's side, the administrative structure makes things difficult in a few ways - if the payments are for the first of the month, they may not get them until a few days after rent is due. Also, s. 7 expenses continues to be hard to manage. MEP in my experience also screws up - reads agreements and orders wrong, and clearing up the situation takes forever.

Starting the conversation that we should be looking at ways to refine, or reform, MEP.

The 2018 Federal Budget included funding for 17 judges to create a Unified Family Court in Alberta. At that time, UFCs had already been established in Manitoba, New Brunswick, PEI, parts of Saskatchewan, and parts of Ontario.

The Unified Family Court would be a one-stop-shop, essentially consolidating the Provincial Court and Court of King's Bench Family Divisions. The idea in a nutshell is that there would be dedicated judges to the area of family law (i.e. with expertise in family law), that court would be in a better position to design it's processes around family law, that court's management would be focused on family law issues, legal education wouldn't have to address two systems and as a result self-represented litigants wouldn't be confused about the two systems.

There was a judicial working group that had built a lot of momentum towards a UFC, however the proposal was shot down by the provincial government. My understanding is that at the time oil had plummeted, and the government decided that there were insufficient resources to implement the change (even though the feds would have been paying for the judges), and too much on their plate to devote the time to changing legislation to update this change. Alberta is in a much different economic climate now, and with the formation of AFLA, we're looking to reignite the flame to make this change happen.

There's a 2014 article by JP Boyd, KC on LawNow which further elaborates some of the benefits of a Unified Family Court: https://www.lawnow.org/unified-family-court-justice-strategy-alberta/

A new announcement states that effective November 1st KB will no longer backdate filing, even when they reject or are slow to file.

It sounds like in several municipalities there isn't much faith that the Clerks will be able to file immediately by November 1st, or even the same day, and my understanding is that court runners are still being blocked.

If they're going to end backdating, they could at least wait until the Clerks have demonstrated the ability to keep up over a long enough period, or once court runners are permitted to file again, so that we can receive immediate feedback. Does anyone know how quickly they've been filing civil documents on the e-filing website?

If they're concerned with the number of rejections, perhaps they'd be better served by centralizing filing rules and imposing only necessary rules, rather than law by plethora of announcements and whim? How many well-being seminars and conferences do we need before the Court considers the undue stress that they're putting on lawyers and litigants?

You will note that the "Criminal Defense Lawyers Association" is very specific and exclusive. It allows them to advocate loudly for their unique interests without jeopardizing other advocacy efforts on other matters (unlike the CBA Criminal Law Section).

Following this lead would mean that the private Family Law Bar (it would have to exclude government lawyers) may wish to set up a similar organization who's purpose is to advocate on behalf of the family bar. It could be that the time has come...

There should be a separate section of QB where the Justices deal only with family law matters, similar to PC. Otherwise, all QB Justices should be given extensive family law training before they're allowed to handle family law cases.

This time the QB Family Law Consulting Committee is seeking feedback regarding file management at the Court. They're looking for both criticism and praise of what does work well, and any suggestions about how to improve the process. I will pass along your feedback, or you're welcome to provide feedback directly to Teri Burant at tburant@emeryjamieson.com or 780-970-6291. Please provide feedback by February 2, 2022.

This time the QB Family Law Consulting Committee is seeking feedback regarding file management at the Court. They're looking for both criticism and praise of what does work well, and any suggestions about how to improve the process. I will pass along your feedback, or you're welcome to provide feedback directly to Teri Burant at tburant@emeryjamieson.com or 780-970-6291. Please provide feedback by February 2, 2022.