Rath defends legal bills as Alberta Prosperity Project faces audit calls

CALGARY — An ongoing dispute over legal fees has deepened divisions within the Alberta independence movement after bank records filed in litigation involving Alberta Prosperity Project (APP) legal counsel Jeffrey Rath and two First Nations’ settlement trusts resurfaced, showing two transfers totalling $288,531.45 to his professional corporation.During an August investigation by Global News into allegations by the Tallcree and Sturgeon Lake Cree Nations that Rath had drained millions of dollars from two trusts without consent, screenshots of a financial document for the Jeffrey R.W. Rath Professional Corporation showed two deposits..The first was a March 2026 payment of $223,531.45 from an account named “Alberta Pros. So,” a name resembling the Alberta Prosperity Society (APS), the registered non-profit society behind the APP. The second was a $65,000 transfer on June 29, 2026, with the notation “Legal Bill/Stay Free Alberta.”.Stay Free Alberta spearheaded the Alberta independence citizen initiative petition campaign and is run by Mitch Sylvestre, one of the founders and leaders of the APP.Rath has defended the legal spending, saying he did not bill for his own time and that the payments covered other lawyers working on litigation involving the APP and Stay Free Alberta.“It's a public matter of public record that my law firm literally spent over a thousand hours in 2025 and 2026 on two different cases that [the APP] didn't wanna be involved in,” Rath told the Western Standard on October 28, citing solicitor-client privilege as the reason he could not divulge details..UPDATED: CIVIL WAR: Rath, Sylvestre accused of betrayal, deception in Alberta independence campaign as APP implodes.“I didn't personally bill for a single hour of my time with regard to anything that I was doing, with regard to anybody, with regard to anything.”Meanwhile, Chris Scott, owner of the Whistle Stop Cafe and a member of the disputed APP board, is pushing for an audit of the organization’s finances and questioning how legal fees were approved.He has alleged Rath was involved in approving invoices for his own firm while serving on the board of directors, something Rath firmly denied when asked by the Western Standard.“No, that's, that's categorically false. That's absolutely categorically false,” Rath said.“It's just ongoing attacks on my reputation, trying to destroy my reputation. I can assure you that I did not bill any time for services as a board member. If to the extent that any invoices were issued, they were appropriate.”.Alberta Prosperity Project power struggle escalates as Chris Scott threatens legal action.Greg Hartzler, chief financial officer for the APS, confirmed the financial documents from the court proceedings were genuine, but said Rath did not sign off on invoices for his own law firm.“There was no billing for Jeff,” Hartzler told the Western Standard, adding that Sylvestre would approve invoices and Hartzler would then sign off.“The whole history of APS, APP, Jeff has never signed anything financial, period.”.The most up-to-date financial statements available for the APS show the group reported $831,635 in professional fees across 2022, 2023 and 2024, but the files do not identify any of the recipients or distinguish legal fees from other professional services.Donations are shown to have fallen from roughly $1.05 million in 2022 to $55,574 in 2024.The APS also recorded deficits of $35,982 in 2023 and $22,682 in 2024, leaving net assets of $88,409 as of October 31, 2024, the end of the latest reporting period covered by those statements..Hartzler acknowledged that he is also the CFO of Stay Free Alberta and confirmed the $65,000 transfer to Rath’s law firm on June 29.“It went to Jeff’s law firm. There was nothing paid to Jeff. It was all other lawyers on hard costs,” he said, adding that Eva Chipiuk, known for her legal work with the Freedom Convoy and independence movement, was among the lawyers paid.Responding to criticism of the payments on November 9 on X, Rath said he had received “authority from my client to respond briefly without in any way waiving privilege over accounts.”.“No one with any sophistication should be surprised by less than 300,000 in legal bills on several separate pieces of litigation comprising hundreds of hours of work in several cases caused by Elections Alberta trying to derail two separate petition campaigns and attacking both APS and Stay Free Alberta for collusion and other meritless allegations,” Rath wrote.He reiterated that he did not bill for a single hour of his time on those cases and identified Chipiuk as one of the lawyers whose fees were covered.Scott stated in a November 8 Facebook post that Rath’s legal fees were “capped at $100,000” and that Rath had presented a $125,000 bill to the board that it “objected” to.“This was brought up, then Mitch and Jeff made up a story about there never being a board and locked the APS board out of everything,” he said.“Then Mitch gave Jeff $238,000. Is that ok?”.The amount Scott cited differs from the $223,531.45 payment shown in the financial document.When asked by the Western Standard to clarify, Scott said he never saw the breakdown of the numbers and that Sylvestre said “he was going to deal with it and get it back down to where it was supposed to be.”“That was the last I heard of it,” Scott said.The legal-fee dispute comes amid competing claims over who is in charge of the APP and the APS.Scott alleges that, at a January 26, 2026, APP meeting, three people — including Rath and Sylvestre — declared the board invalid and installed a new five-person board without telling the other directors.“Three is below the five the [group’s] bylaws require, and the rest of the directors weren’t given notice,” Scott said.“By May, General Counsel’s position was that several of us had ‘never been directors.’”He also blamed Sylvestre for filing issues with the corporate registry, alleging he had failed to sign off on audited financial statements necessary to complete the submissions.In October, Scott posted a statement on social media saying six of the ten APP directors attended a September 14 meeting where they voted to terminate Rath as general counsel and Sylvestre as CEO.At a subsequent September 24 meeting, Rath and Sylvestre were removed as directors, according to Scott..Rath disputed Scott’s claims in an X post on November 9, saying “none of what Chris Scott is saying is true.”In a later post that day, Rath added, “Chris Scott thinks that making up false stories about solicitor client privileged business of the society is appropriate conduct.”.The Western Standard reached out to Sylvestre for comment, but he did not respond before publication.At an October 22 online APP meeting about the board dispute, Sylvestre stated that he would not “have a fight in public about any of our internal stuff.”“I’m going to hold that line,” he said.“I’m not going to disparage anybody. It’s going to literally make us all look like we’re freaking crazy... I’m just going to move forward.”Scott now says his group has prepared a package for an arbitrator seeking a declaration that the January 26 meeting was illegitimate. His group then plans to seek a court order updating the registered directors, with a financial audit to follow.“Nothing I'm saying is untrue. [Jeff’s MO] and I guess like most good lawyers is that before you get into any of the details, you chip away at the standing that the other party has. So what he's saying is, you guys don't exist. You have no business in this conversation at all. So there is no reason to go to court because you guys don't exist,” Scott said.“We met as the board of the Alberta Prosperity Society. We fundraised, we managed the bank account. We acted on behalf of the society as directors and now Jeff is saying that because a piece of paper wasn't filed properly with the government, that that never happened, which is untrue.”When asked about the board dispute, Hartzler said he was under a confidentiality agreement but that the situation was “not what it’s all made out to be.”“There's a lot of very false information,” he said.

Rath defends legal bills as Alberta Prosperity Project faces audit calls

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UPDATED: CIVIL WAR: Rath, Sylvestre accused of betrayal, deception in Alberta independence campaign as APP implodes