Opinion: ‘Landmark’ donation could lead to generational change in family justice​on February 8, 2025 at 1:00 pm

Making change in society is difficult work.

Those who benefit from the status quo tend to resist change. Those who yearn for change are often powerless to make it happen. Those who are indifferent — usually the silent majority — default to what they know. It takes an extraordinary effort to lead even small changes, so when an organization steps up to make generational change, that really needs to be celebrated.

The Alberta Law Foundation recently sparked such a change through its landmark $26.8-million community impact donation to the University of Calgary Faculties of Social Work and Law, aimed at transforming family justice in Alberta.

It’s truly a win-win-win initiative that promises to profoundly affect our province. On one hand, it will spare countless children the trauma of adversarial court proceedings and help families involved to build resilience while learning important life skills. At the same time, the forward-looking initiative should also reduce the number of cases before the courts. Family law cases account for 35 per cent of all civil cases in Canada, with significant time and resources dedicated to parenting time and child-support disputes.

Instead of starting at the dispute stage, couples will be supported through a less adversarial process that helps them work through the important decisions around their divorce often left to the courts. This preventive approach has the additional benefit of diverting people from the legal aid system.

The community impact donation is already creating new machinery to take on the complex work of systems change in Alberta. Two new research chairs, in the Faculties of Law and Social Work, and a new Centre for Transformation are being created to work with community and family justice stakeholders on evidence-informed approaches aimed at improving quality of life for those involved in the family justice system.

The research chairs and the new centre will work closely with Re-imagining the Family Justice System (RFJS), a community initiative created by Alberta’s courts. A pilot project in Grande Prairie is already demonstrating that new approaches can achieve promising outcomes.

In a recent Notice to the Public, the Court of King’s Bench is encouraging couples to consider the causes of their disputes — whether social, relationship, parenting, financial or health challenges — and are connected to additional resources for support and skill-building.