New Alberta Rules of Court One Step Closer

The Alberta Law Reform Institute has been drafting a new set of court rules for Alberta since 2001. Our previous rules came out in 1968 and after 40 years of use, they are not a cohesive read. A little about the project from ALRI’s perspective:

The project goal was to create rules that are clear, useful and effective tools for accessing a fair, timely and cost efficient civil justice system. The proposed rules are:

* short — arranged and written in plain English,
* clear — describe a logical step-by-step process for carrying out a lawsuit, and
* user-friendly — a single, comprehensive, consistent code of court procedure.

The Final Report for the project is available along with some proposed forms, and all of the consultation documents.

The project took 6 years, involved 11 working groups, published 21 consultation documents, and benefited from over 30,000 hours of volunteer time.

The ALRI Report is not the last step for a new set of Rules, but we are getting closer. On March 16, Bill 31 was introduced in the Alberta Legislature. This act will have the effect of preparing the way for the new rules of court regulation to be implemented.

Many consequential amendments are required by this, including exempting certain sections of the Alberta Interpretation Act, for example sections dealing with the calculation of time. The bill is huge, and has bunches of conditional in force dates like the following example:

Amends RSA 2000 cC-7
30(1) The Change of Name Act is amended by this section.
(2) Section 29 is amended by striking out “by petition”.
(3) If section 88(1) of the Vital Statistics Act, SA 2007 cV-4.1,
comes into force before the coming into force of this section,
this section is repealed.

The whole act is in force on Proclamation, so addressing the in force dates of consequential amendments will require careful review.

Giselle Abt, the Alberta Queen’s Printer, says this about the new rules: “There is still a lot of work that has to be done. All of the staturoy requirements need to be in place before the revised rules can be adopted. The project involves coordination between the QP, ALRI, Legislative Counsel, and Alberta Justice. There are still some things to be determined before publication, but so far the project is on track for adoption in early 2010.”