Two bills passed by the UCP government last year have granted Justice Minister Mickey Amery a sweeping array of new powers, including final say on the authorization of grants from the Alberta Law Foundation, which administers a private fund generated by the interest generated off lawyer's trusts.--CP FILE PHOTO
zmason@medicinehatnews.com
A charitable legal education organization was denied grant funding from the Alberta Law Foundation this week after recent legislative changes drastically altered the funding structure for legal non-profits in Alberta over the last year.
The Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre, a non-profit charitable organization focused on using education, outreach and original research to advance civil liberties across the province, has been operating for 43 years.
Throughout that time, it has received as much as 95 per cent of its operating budget from the Alberta Law Foundation, an entity legislated to manage and disperse the interest from lawyer’s trust accounts and invest it into legal research, assistance and public education.
Over the past two years, the relationship between the government and the ALF has been upended by legislative changes.
In April 2025, the UCP government passed Bill 39, which gave the justice minister power to approve any grant over $250,000 – almost all the grants issued by the ALF.
The bill also doubled the required contribution from the ALF to Legal Aid Alberta, from 25 to 50 per cent of its annual interest revenue.
After the bill was passed, nearly $10 million in funding, slated for 14 non-profits that had already been approved by the ALF board, was clawed back.
Heather Jenkins, press secretary to Justice Minister Mickey Amery, claims Alberta’s government is working to ensure the ALF’s long-term financial stability.
Then executive director of the ALF Byron Chan vocally resisted the changes.
“The government imposing decision-making authority over grants to non-profit organizations that deliver legal supports and services to vulnerable populations is deeply concerning and inserts political risk in what has always been an independent, non-partisan system,” he posted to his social media last April. “It defies logic to ‘ensure the Alberta Law Foundation’s long-term financial stability’ by taking twice as much of its revenue going forward.”
In December, the relationship was altered yet again by the passing of Bill 14, which granted further powers to the minister, now allowing him to dictate bylaws for the ALF.
The following month, two members of the ALF’s board were dismissed, and later that week, Chan and the entire 14-person staff tendered their resignations.
The foundation is now managed by the management consulting firm Optimus SRB.
In a statement posted to the ALF webpage Jan. 16 announcing the “organizational transition,” the ALF said it remained financially sound and will continue operations under its statutory mandate.
In a statement to the News, Jenkins said it would be inappropriate to comment further on a human resource matter between the ALF and its employees.
The Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre received notice in November that its 43-year funding relationship with the ALF would be terminated. Cam Stewart, ACLRC executive director, says his organization asked for a meeting with the minister’s office.
“We met with the minister’s chief of staff and one of their senior policy analysts just before Christmas,” he said in an interview with the News. “They said, ‘our priority is frontline services.’ We were never told any of this. This is not in the legislation that covers the foundation grant. It’s even now not on the Law Foundation’s website.”
The ALF webpage says successful grant applications must fall within the foundation’s objectives, as interpreted by the foundation. One of the objects listed is contributing to the legal education and knowledge of the people of Alberta and providing programs and facilities for those purposes, an objective Stewart says the ACLRC clearly meets.
Last year, he says the ACLRC produced 11 research papers and provided educational opportunities for more than 3,000 Albertans on the subjects of human rights and civil liberties.
Stewart says his organization and the other ALF grantees he’s corresponded with don’t know what criteria is now being used to evaluate eligibility for ALF grants.
“One, the criteria has changed, and second, the process has changed. And this has all not been communicated and has been done unilaterally, without consultation with any of the sector.”
In a statement to the News, Jenkins re-iterated that the ACLRC grant application was denied because the organization failed to demonstrate how funds would deliver frontline legal services. But she did not answer News questions about what constitutes frontline services or what criteria are used by the minister to determine whether a grant will be authorized.
Jenkins also added that Alberta’s government is committed to providing “robust oversight of public interest dollars.”
The funds now subject to Amery’s control are not taxpayer dollars.
“We were very clear that we have been getting funds at this time, same schedule for the last 40 years. We have worked within the system, and we told the ministry, come January 1, we don’t have the funds to continue,” Stewart said.
The ACLRC’s request for reconsideration was denied.
Stewart says many of the organizations receiving grants from the ALF rely on that money as a primary or sole source of operational funds. The loss of the ALF funding could shutter many of them.
Stewart says the ALCRC will now need to rely on donations to stay afloat.
He sees these changes as part of a broader trend that has seen the UCP government concentrate power increasingly in the executive.
“With the changes in legislation, the government has come after the teachers, after the nurses, after the trans community and now they’re coming after civil liberty and justice organizations. We’re standing up, and we’re hoping the community stands up and says enough is enough.”
