On Sept. 19 it was announced the New Brunswick Crown Counsel (NBCC) Group and the province’s government ratified a five-year collective agreement that, among other things, raises the pay for Crown counsel — government lawyers who handle things such as commercial and property law, labour and employment, federal law and constitutional law, and various forms of non-criminal litigation.
The new deal is retroactive to 2023 and will run through 2028.
One issue for the NBCC — a group covered by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) — was that Crown counsel had been earning significantly less than New Brunswick’s Crown prosecutors.
This new deal, says NBCC president Eric Boucher, brings pay parity between the Crown counsel and their prosecutorial counterparts.
“Without getting into actual pay — into actual salaries — what I can say is that before this new collective agreement, we were by far the worst paid government lawyers in the country,” Boucher told Law360 Canada. “Now, we’re in the bottom third, I would say, but closer to comparable jurisdictions like Nova Scotia and Manitoba. And, of course, most importantly, in New Brunswick, [closer to] Crown prosecutors.”
Boucher was asked why he declined to discuss compensation — given his members are public employees.
“We’re just … trying not to distract from the idea that what we were looking for is parity with the Crown prosecutors. Really, it was about achieving parity with the Crown prosecutors. It wasn’t as much about how much the prosecutors [make] — if they’d gotten a little less, we would have taken that money, too. So, we’re just trying to avoid getting into the numbers.”
Boucher explained that he wanted to wait until the deal is completely formalized before commenting on compensation.
A spokesperson with New Brunswick’s government also refused to comment on numbers.
“No further details are being released until the contract has been officially signed,” said Jade Emmanuel in an email.
Boucher noted that New Brunswick’s Crown counsel and Crown prosecutors are both represented by PIPSC but are different bargaining units.
According to the NBCC news release, wage gaps between counsel and prosecutors ranged from 29 per cent at “senior levels” to 49 per cent for junior lawyers — “despite identical qualifications and responsibilities.”
This new deal for Crown counsel comes around a year after the prosecutors reached their own new deal with the province.
It was in August 2024 that the New Brunswick Crown Prosecutor Association voted to accept their own new agreement — thus ending a contentious labour dispute that at one point had the NBCPA threatening work action.
Like Crown counsel in this case, the prosecutors had taken issue with their relatively low pay.
As of May 2024, before reaching their deal, the salaries for New Brunswick’s prosecutors ranged from $57,945 to $144,738. According to information their association sent to Law360 Canada at the time, they were the lowest paid prosecutors in the country.
The NBCC news release also takes aim at the province’s use of private law firms to assist in filling the role of Crown counsel, noting the use of lawyers from the private bar had doubled in cost, from $4.1 million in 2019-20 to $8.6 million in 2024-25.
Boucher spoke of the benefits of keeping business in-house.
“Sometimes outsourcing may be necessary, but too much outsourcing leads to a gutting of in-house expertise, which just leads to more outsourcing.”
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