CALGARY — Alberta’s legal aid service will receive an influx of funding from the provincial government, with $70 million committed through the next four years.

But some in the province still don’t believe this amount is enough of a commitment.

The rise in funding begins with $14.8 million added to the service’s funding this year, on top of the more than $89 million the government already provides to Alberta Legal Aid. The NDP government has increased legal aid funding by 72 per cent since being elected in 2015.

Premier Rachel Notley said Thursday the new funding will make Legal Aid Alberta more accessible, improve its services for clients, and make Alberta’s legal system more efficient by reducing court backlog.

“Today’s announcement helps reverse decades of underfunding, which often left low-income people on their own,” Notley said.

“For a long time, support for legal aid in Alberta lagged way behind the rest of the country. We were at the back of the pack. Today that changes. Today, access to justice takes an important step forward in Alberta.”

Legal Aid Alberta is an independent, publicly funded, not-for-profit service, providing advice and representation to low-income and vulnerable Albertans. Notley said more than 60,000 Albertans used legal aid last year, and an estimated additional 7,000 people will be able to access the service this year thanks to the new funding.

Underfunding in legal aid has been a problem criticized heavily this year by the Criminal Defence Lawyers Association.

The Calgary organization vowed to stop doing pro bono work in April and called for a 65 per cent increase to Legal Aid. The organization later said strike action was possible if more funding wasn’t provided for legal aid so that Alberta’s working poor had better access to legal services.

Ian Savage, the president of the Criminal Defence Lawyers Association, said that $70 million spread out over four years isn’t enough to improve Legal Aid Alberta’s services and wasn’t close to what his organization had called for.

“The court system is currently the worst it’s ever been in the history of Alberta,” Savage said.

“Delays to get to trial are increasing, not decreasing. That’s due to a variety of factors. The number of low income and vulnerable people who are still not getting legal representation continues to increase. There’s just a variety of ways in which the court system is not functioning properly.”

The Criminal Defence Lawyers Association will hold meetings to decide on an action plan to react to this news, which could still potentially result in a strike to push for more funding to legal aid in Alberta.

Daniel Chivers, president of the Criminal Trial Lawyers Association in Edmonton, said his organization petitioned for years for Legal Aid Alberta to receive more funding. He called the province’s $70 million commitment substantial and long overdue, highlighting how legal aid funding creates efficiencies in Alberta’s entire legal system.

“When you have people who are now getting coverage at early opportunities because government can afford to give them coverage, you don’t have unrepresented people in court wasting court time,” Chivers said.

“They instantly have lawyers, move through the system, make decisions that save court time, avoiding lengthy trials. You’re creating these other efficiencies in the court system.”

Particularly, Chivers praised a new governance agreement between the government and Legal Aid Alberta that will make the service’s funding more stable and predictable. Funding will change based on the service’s demand, which has risen in recent years.

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“It provides the flexibility that the funding is going to be based on changes of demand, where the prior agreement didn’t,” Chivers said.

“If demand increased, the funding didn’t increase along with it and that created a situation where Legal Aid had to engage in drastic cuts and make decisions that weren’t in the best interest of the people they intended to serve.”

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