The Alberta Justice Navigator Network for Newcomer Access to Justice
Project Description
The Justice Navigator Network is a province-wide initiative led by the Alberta Association of Immigrant Serving Agencies (AAISA) in collaboration with the Alberta Law Foundation (ALF). The Network provides the foundation for coordinated, community-based legal navigation across Alberta’s newcomer-serving sector.
Developed over the past year through extensive consultation with community organizations, legal partners, and subject matter experts, the Network defines how the Justice Navigator role operates, is trained, and supported across the province. This is a collective effort of many across Alberta’s newcomer-serving and access-to-justice sectors. Their contributions have guided the framework so the network can be practical and responsive to the realities of the communities served.
The province-wide model is:
- Standardized: defining clear scope, competencies, and training expectations for Justice Navigators.
- Coordinated: enabling cross-sector collaboration through provincial engagement and shared learning.
- Evidence-based: embedding evaluation and feedback loops to track impact and adapt tools over time.
Purpose and Goal
The framework of the Justice Navigator Network aims to improve access to justice for newcomers by defining, professionalizing, and supporting a new community-based role: the Justice Navigator. Navigators are non-legal professionals embedded in newcomer-serving organizations who help clients understand their rights, obligations, and legal processes, and who connect them to trusted legal and community support.
The established infrastructure needed to sustain this role includes clear standards for training, coordination, and evaluation, so that every newcomer, regardless of geography or background, receives accurate, culturally responsive legal information and navigation support. It is guided by three core components: Professional Development, Evaluation, and Coordination.
Professional Development
Professional development provides the foundation for the Justice Navigator role. Its purpose is to professionalize and standardize the position, ensuring Navigators are equipped to provide accurate and consistent support within clear legal boundaries.
In collaboration with the Centre for Public Legal Education Alberta (CPLEA), AAISA has developed a competency-based training framework that integrates settlement expertise, legal literacy, trauma-informed care, and cultural responsiveness. This collaboration ensures that Navigators’ learning is rooted in both legal accuracy, newcomer support service, and community practice.
Training modules will be delivered through all phases of the position, including onboarding, applied practice, and ongoing professional education. We are committed to creating a continuous learning system that evolves with contextual changes in law, policy, and client needs. Standardized training ensures newcomers receive high-quality support wherever they reside, with the mandate to strengthen the credibility of Navigators as trusted intermediaries in Alberta’s justice ecosystem.
Evaluation
Evaluation is the mechanism that ensures accountability, learning, and longevity of the Justice Navigator model. It measures the effectiveness of Navigator placements, identifies gaps, and informs program refinement through real-time feedback loops.
The evaluation framework will align with the initiative’s Logic Model and Theory of Change, tracking outcomes related to service access, client experience, and systemic impact. As Alberta’s legal and newcomer landscapes evolve, evaluation provides the evidence needed to adapt tools, training, and coordination.
AAISA’s approach to evaluation emphasizes both rigor and practicality. Tools are designed to be user-friendly for host organizations, producing data that directly informs improvement while avoiding undue reporting burden. Evaluation is not a compliance exercise—it is a learning process that ensures the Justice Navigator model remains relevant, effective, and community-driven.
Coordination
Coordination and engagement form the connective tissue of the Justice Navigator Framework. This component ensures that Navigators, organizations, and legal partners remain aligned and collaborative through provincial communities of practice and shared communication platforms.
AAISA serves as the provincial convener, hosting engagement tables where Navigators and partners can exchange promising practices, troubleshoot challenges, and co-develop solutions. These structures promote consistency across the province while respecting the diverse needs of local contexts, ensuring urban and rural organizations alike to learn from one another and build shared standards of excellence.
Through regular communities of practice, cross-sector meetings, and provincial coordination, the engagement component fosters a collective professional identity for Justice Navigators, rooted in collaboration, reflection, and peer learning.
Continued Participation
The Justice Navigator Framework will continue to grow through collaboration and shared accountability. Over the coming year, AAISA will work with newcomer-serving organizations, legal partners, and funders to pilot Navigator roles, test tools, and refine the model through ongoing evaluation and community input.
Participating organizations will receive orientation to the Scope of Practice, training opportunities through the professional development system, access to evaluation tools, and participation in a provincial community of practice.
AAISA’s commitment is to support and strengthen Alberta’s newcomer-serving ecosystem through building the systems, partnerships, and professional standards that make justice accessible, equitable, and sustainable for all.
For more information or partnership inquiries, contact alam@aaisa.ca
The Alberta Justice Navigator Network for Newcomer Access to Justice Project is funded by and in collaboration with the Alberta Law Foundation.
