Advocates Society Report on Alarming Civil and Family Court Delays Across Canada

In late June, the Advocates Society published its report Delay No Longer. The Time to Act Is Now calling on the federal, provincial, and territorial governments to dedicate resources to the civil and family justice courts to tackle delays that are undermining faith in the justice system.

The report describes the severe impacts that delays are already having on real people and businesses who need help resolving their disputes.

The document gives a few examples:

• In Quebec, it was estimated that in 2021-2022, litigants would wait an average of 593 days between the filing of their claim in the Small Claims Division (for claims of less than $15,000) and trial.
• In British Columbia in 2022, the Supreme Court “bumped” (i.e. delayed hearings because of the lack of judicial resources) 10.9% of all long chambers applications, 24.6% of civil trials (102 bumped compared to 312 heard) and 14.4% of family trials (26 bumped compared to 154 heard).
• In Alberta, it routinely takes more than 9 months for an application longer than 20 minutes to be heard by a judge in Edmonton or Calgary; and 2 to 3 years for a trial longer than 5 days to be scheduled from the date the parties certify readiness. 
• In Ontario, it currently takes almost 1.5 years for a motion longer than 2 hours to be heard by a judge in Toronto; more than 1.5 years after the trial management conference (or more than 4 to 5 years from the issuance of the original application) for a 3-week family law trial to be heard by a judge in Brampton; and more than 4 to 5 years for a civil action to proceed from commencement to trial. 

The Society proposes more than a piecemeal approach to resolve the problem. It calls for a coordinated plan of action, including:

• measuring delay and setting targets;
• increasing resources for the justice system and deploying those resources flexibly with the use of technology;
• improving the use of technology, especially to schedule court hearings; and
• reviewing procedural rules that pose roadblocks to speedy justice.