ManitobaThe 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. Justice minister ‘disappointed and surprised’ over mediation breakdown with prosecutors groupLauren Scott · CBC News · Posted: Oct 26, 2025 4:32 PM EDT | Last Updated: 5 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 3 minutesThe Manitoba Association of Crown Attorneys didn’t return to mediation meetings on Friday morning. ( Chelsea Kemp/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. Ben Wickstrom is the vice-president of prosecutions and spokesperson for the Manitoba Association of Crown Attorneys. He said the province wasn’t offering ‘real resources on a very urgent basis’ to address heavy workloads among prosecutors. (Ron Dhaliwal/CBC)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.” Manitoba Justice Minister Matt Wiebe said the NDP government has hired 35 new Crown prosecutors since taking office in October 2023. (Jaison Empson/CBC)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. “There’s nothing exceptional about our pay and there’s a real — from our perspective — real disparity between how prosecutors are paid in Manitoba and how they’re paid in other provinces,” Wickstrom said. “That has had an effect on our ability to retain prosecutors.” Wiebe said in his statement that he was “disappointed and surprised” that MACA walked away from negotiations, adding the province is “not interested in negotiating through the media.” Wiebe said the province remains prepared to stay at the table. Wickstrom said new arbitration dates are being set, but it may be another year before the grievance is heard.ABOUT THE AUTHORLauren Scott is a Winnipeg-based reporter with CBC Manitoba. They hold a master’s degree in computational and data journalism, and have previously worked for the Hamilton Spectator and The Canadian Press.
Crown attorneys say Manitoba government isn’t addressing urgent needs as lawyers walk away from labour talks
