Court of Appeal series: An interview with Chief Justice Catherine Fraser

Otiena Ellwand, Edmonton Journal 

Court of Appeal series: An interview with Chief Justice Catherine Fraser

Chief Justice Catherine Fraser

Shaughn Butts / Edmonton Journal


As a young person, one of Catherine Fraser’s first jobs was stocking shelves in the women’s section of a department store for $35 a week. She’ll never forget that the young man who worked in the men’s section earned five dollars more than she did.

“It brought home to me the differences in how men and women were being treated during that era in our society,” the Chief Justice of Alberta said recently.

That brush with inequality is one of the reasons Fraser invested her life in the law. She’s a trailblazer in Alberta and in the rest of Canada for becoming the first female chief justice ever appointed to a provincial court of appeal in this country.

“I chose law because I saw it as a vehicle for change,” said Fraser, who was also the youngest chief justice ever appointed in Alberta when she took the position in 1992, at the age of 44.

“I chose law because I was concerned about inequality in society. I wanted to make a difference and I wanted to do something about that, and I have spent most of my adult life trying to achieve that objective. Inequality is injustice, it’s just that simple and we all have an obligation in society to do what we can to ensure equality for all.”

Growing up the granddaughter of immigrants from Lebanon and Ukraine also left a lasting impression on her.

“They were always delighted that Canada gave themselves and their children and their dreams a home,” she said.

They did their part to contribute to their new community and Fraser felt a duty to do the same. But while she was raised to respect peoples’ differences, such consideration wasn’t always reciprocated. She remembers her mother telling her about having to lose her Ukrainian accent so she could get a job as a school teacher in Alberta. “I think that with that background it also explains part of what has fueled my interest in equality for all,” Fraser said.

In this fourth segment in our series marking the Court of Appeal of Alberta’s centennial, Chief Justice Catherine Fraser answers questions about some of the challenges facing the court in its next 100 years.


Q: What does it mean to be the Chief Justice of Alberta?

A: The Chief Justice of Alberta is the chief justice for the entire province, which means that there is an overall responsibility for the functioning of all the courts in the province. Primarily, the chief justice is responsible for the functioning of the Court of Appeal. The individual who is Chief Justice of Alberta also holds the position of Chief Justice of the Northwest Territories Court of Appeal and the Nunavut Court of Appeal.

Q: What are your most important duties?

A: There are certain key things that the chief justice has to always be concerned about, and first and foremost would be preserving the rule of law and judicial independence, and ensuring that the institutional and operational independence of the courts are maintained.

Q: Why is it important to have diversity in the courts and what more can be done?

A: In order to command the respect of the people that it serves in a democracy, (a justice system) has to be inclusive and that means the system has to work well for everybody and not just those for whom the system already works well.

By the time you get to the point where you’re going to be appointed a judge, it is a privileged background. So it’s important that the individuals that are appointed come from as diverse a background as possible … because at the end of the day, you’re judging people from all walks of life, so it helps to have a bench that consists of individuals who can relate to and understand the people and the problems that they might have in life. Problems that might have affected the way they have dealt with things, problems that may have caused them to get into trouble.

Q: What are some issues the court may have to deal with in the future?

A: Look at the conflict that potentially can arise with all of our privacy interests on the one hand, all the national security stuff on the other. Where is the intersection between all of these? What is privacy? How far does it go? Who gets access to what information and when? What purposes can they use it for? What notion of privacy are we left with as a society? Do we have any anymore? Huge issues, all unresolved, blank canvas. All that will start to be drawn in and filled in (I believe) over the next two decades.

Sustainability issues as well. Sustainability in terms of broad issues that affect all of us: health care, education, the environment, the biosphere generally.

Q: How do you manage your natural human empathy when making decisions on the law?

A: That empathy still exists, it always exists. The law is not disconnected from reality. Of course judges have to apply the law, but what’s the law? The law itself is informed by and shaped by considerations that relate to people. We are not making law for robots, we are making it for people, so the law has to fit with the needs of society.

Q: What are some objectives you’ve set for yourself and the Court of Appeal to achieve over the next few years?

Everything we do in the court is to aid one broad objective and that is to improve the delivery of justice to Albertans and to ensure that Albertans have access to fair and equal justice. (One focus) is to use technology to help people in a way that has not been done before. There are many more self-represented individuals that are appearing both at the trial courts and even the appellate level and we would like to see them have all the tools possible to be able to do the best possible jobs for themselves ... and those tools are not paper and pen today, they’re online tools and that’s what people are looking for.

Q: What’s one piece of advice you’d give a young person wishing to pursue a career in law?

A: If you have an interest in people and their problems and you want to make a real difference in society, then I would encourage anyone with that view of life to pursue an interest in law, because law is a vehicle for change. It’s a vehicle for positive change in our society, it’s probably one of the most effective vehicles for change, and also a career in law opens many doors.



Born: in Campbellton, N.B. in 1947

Moved: to Edmonton with her family, in 1958

Education: a bachelor of arts and bachelor of laws from the University of Alberta; master of laws from the London School of Economics

While articling in Edmonton: she taught what is believed to be the first course on Women and the Law in Canada

Practised: corporate and commercial law in Edmonton

Appointed: to the Court of Queen’s Bench in 1989

Appointed: to the Court of Appeal two years later

March 12, 1992: became the youngest chief justice ever appointed in Alberta at the age of 44

Series Dates

Our six-part series on the Court of Appeal in Alberta continues.

March 21: Q & A overview

March 28: Four important court decisions

April 3: People of the court

Today: Chief Justice Catherine Fraser

April 10: Demystifying/understanding the court

April 11: The changing face of the court