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| Shawn Patten |
Then, one day, there it was — a maternity leave position. Competing with several other hopeful candidates, this was my time to shine. With only limited criminal experience, I impressed upon the interviewing committee that I was the one they were looking for. After a week of anxiously waiting for the phone to ring, my perseverance paid off. Despite only being offered a six-month contract with no guarantee of renewal, I jumped at the opportunity to get my foot in the door. That was 2007.
Leap forward to 2025. Now a bit greyer and recently resigned to wearing reading glasses, I am still with the Crown Attorney’s Office. For me, there is no question that the decision to become a prosecutor was the right career move. Those who enjoy this type of work will tell you, as far as legal practice, they cannot imagine doing anything else. I am one of those people. Crown colleagues across the country invariably share the same sentiment. The work is special.
Yet, in recent years, nationwide, many Crown Attorneys of my vintage have moved on. Their departures are typically unexpected as many have dedicated a good portion of their working career to public prosecutions. Even more alarming, of the individuals who leave, most will tell you that they still love the work. So, what happened?
The answer, while multifaceted, finds root in the changing landscape of public prosecutions. Since 2015, Statistics Canada has revealed a steady rise not only in the volume of crime across the country, but the seriousness of the offences committed. Crown Attorneys have struggled to keep pace. With the surge in crime, file numbers have skyrocketed with often limited increases in office staffing. To exacerbate matters, many files have become more complex due to the technological advancements in crime as well as investigative methods. This complexity translates into the need for more time to review files — something Crown Attorneys no longer have.
With more files, more complex files and less resources, not surprisingly, Crown Attorneys are burning out and quitting. The departures are insidious, following a pattern where offices are slowly gutted of more senior lawyers, leaving junior lawyers to handle work often beyond their capability. Those junior lawyers, already overwhelmed, routinely quit prosecutions after a few years. The exodus results in a state of perpetual turnover, leaving a glut of lawyers with limited experience to handle the lion’s share of prosecutions — from simple to complex.
The lack of sufficient lawyers, especially experienced lawyers, has led to crisis in many provinces. Associations representing Crown Attorneys in Alberta, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have recently sounded the alarm that increased workloads combined with staffing shortages have negatively impacted the ability of prosecutors to finish trials within the timelines as stipulated in R. v. Jordan, 2016 SCC 27. The delay in bringing cases to completion has resulted in many charges being judicially stayed or withdrawn. Inadequate staffing of prosecutors, compounded by pandemic backlogs and court-related delays, have left many complainants without their day in court, raising concerns over public safety.
The strain to keep up with the burgeoning file load has also taken its toll on Crown Attorneys’ mental health. Trapped in a cycle of staffing turnover, Crown Attorney’s offices typically suffer with low morale and exhaustion. Excessive workloads and pending Jordan deadlines have created pressure on those who remain to work at an unmanageable pace. That pace, as noted in a recent survey conducted by the Manitoba Association of Crown Attorneys, has left many prosecutors debilitated with issues ranging from post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety to depression and suicidal ideations.
Provincial governments have taken notice. Since 2020, in response to the increased workload and complexity of crime, prosecution services in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and most recently Newfoundland and Labrador have committed to hire more lawyers. While some provinces have been successful filling these positions, senior lawyers continue to depart as those hired often lack the necessary experience to share the workload of more complex files. The constant exit of senior lawyers in tandem with quick turnover of new hires has equated to marginal or short-lived increases in office staffing.
So, what is the solution? While many provinces have relied on increased salaries to entice new candidates, seasoned prosecutors generally agree, proper renumeration, although important, is not the driving factor for longevity in public prosecutions. Lawyers who love the work intuitively become career Crown Attorneys. They do not need coaxing, but they do need support. Without support, even the most well paid and dedicated lawyer will eventually leave — not because they have grown tired of being a Crown Attorney, but because they cannot perform at the level the work requires and deserves.
Support though, is not simply a function of hiring more people. A supportive Crown Attorney’s office requires a hierarchy of knowledge built upon a system of mentorship. Mentorship that begins with embracing and training the newest recruits, who, in turn, pass on their expertise and know-how to the next generation of upcoming prosecutors. New hires absorbed into this system link into a daisy chain of knowledge readying them to become career Crown Attorneys. This cycle of support creates a sustainable office with a spectrum of skilled prosecutors capable of effectively managing and helping others on a myriad of files of varying complexity.
Yet, with crushing workloads now placing a commodity on the time of Crown Attorneys to effectively mentor, the cycle of support is collapsing. Less time, compounded with increasingly more mid-level to senior lawyers quitting, has left many offices with reduced depth and diminished staff to train others. The result has created an environment with minimal to no support for junior and senior prosecutors alike.
Rebuilding a system of support undoubtedly starts with placing limits on individual file counts. With manageable file counts, Crown Attorneys will once more have the time to adequately review the cases before them while providing other prosecutors the necessary guidance. Eventually, manageable workloads will sow the seeds for office stability, rejuvenating a system of support capable of effectively training an influx of new Crown Attorneys to handle the increased workload.
Unfortunately, breaking the cycle of turnover and rebuilding is no easy task. Although governments are aware of the link between workload and attrition, finding a solution to absorb the continual flow of files from exiting prosecutors, while maintaining manageable file counts, remains elusive.
With no clear solution in sight, the steady departure of Crown Attorneys will persist. As those left behind struggle to keep public safety a priority in the face of growing file counts, cases that exceed Jordan timelines will continue to mount. Consequentially, the resultant stay or termination of those cases may prove the only consistent reprieve from unmanageable workloads.
Shawn Patten writes in his capacity as president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Crown Attorneys Association. He holds an LLM from the University of London specializing in criminology and criminal justice and a B. Comm from Saint Mary’s University specializing in industrial relations. He has been a lawyer for over 21 years and is presently a member of the Special Prosecutions Office in St. John’s.
The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, LexisNexis Canada, Law360 Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
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