On April 1, after more than a year of consultation, research and consideration, Ontario’s Civil Rules Review (CRR) working group released its proposed reforms to the Rules of Civil Procedure – the rulebook that governs litigation in the province. If successfully implemented, they will mark the most significant procedural development in the history of Ontario’s civil justice system.
Key reforms
It is hard to overstate the scope of the proposed changes. CRR has completely re-imagined the process for civil lawsuits in the province in hopes of increasing access to justice for Ontarians and making the courts more efficient and effective at resolving civil disputes in a timely manner.
Among other things, some of the key changes include:
- Evidence-First Model. The CRR has proposed to introduce an “evidence-first” model of litigation that will be familiar to lawyers and litigants in common law jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom and Australia. Parties will be required to begin producing their evidence as early as when they serve their pleadings.
- No More Discoveries. Within this new model, the CRR proposed to significantly reduce pre-trial discovery processes, including the wholesale elimination of examinations for discoveries or “depositions” as they are known in the United States. Examinations for discovery have been a keystone of civil litigation in common law North America for almost a century.
- Reliance > Relevance. In line with its new approach to pre-trial discovery, the CRR has proposed replacing the well-worn relevance standard for documentary disclosure with a narrower, reliance-based standard, supplemented by tailored rights to request additional documents.
- Conference Focus. The CRR has taken aim at Ontario’s robust (and frequently criticized) “motions culture” by restructuring the process to filter litigants into less formal case conferences with judges in order to address and resolve pre-trial procedural disputes.
- Paper+ Determinations. The CRR has proposed to eliminate redundancy created by unsuccessful or partial summary judgment motions, forcing cases to be finally decided at either a full trial or at a summary hearing in writing pursuant to a “Paper Record+ Process.”
- Reducing Delay. The CRR has proposed changes it says will “all but eliminate a party’s ability to delay a proceeding,” including granting adjournments for hearing dates only in exceptional circumstances and introducing monetary penalties for delay.
The CRR will be soliciting comments from lawyers, academics, the public and other justice system stakeholders in Ontario until June 16, 2025, regarding the proposed reforms.
While it remains to be seen how these proposed reforms will be received by stakeholders, there can be no doubt the CRR has presented a bold re-imagining of Ontario’s civil justice system.
