Although there are serious concerns about some of the CRR’s proposed changes, and about the CRR’s process, most would agree that there are many excellent ideas in this Discussion Paper. 

I’ve got a little packet of gold stars for those that make a lot of sense to me, and haven’t been criticized by any of the comments on the CRR that I have seen.

⭐️#1. No More Failed Summary Judgment Motions. 

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The CRR says the deadline for comments is June 16th — only 10 weeks after they released the enormous Phase 2 Discussion Paper.

Why such a rush??

The CRR asks for comments to be submitted to Jennifer.Smart@Ontario.ca

Do you feel like your head is whirling? How did we get here so fast?

January 29, 2024: Chief Justice Morawetz and Attorney General Doug Downey Announce Civil Rules Review

May, 2024: Civil Rules Review Releases Phase 1 Report

April 2025: Civil Rules Review Release Phase 2 Consultation Report

June 16 2025: The CRR’s Deadline for Submission of Comments on the Phase 2 Consultation Report

July to December 2025: “Phase 3: Approval and Implementation” (according to the CRR Terms of Reference)

December 2025: “Approved regulations” implementing the Civil Rules Review reforms will be “filed with a target date of December 2025 or earlier if feasible” (according to the CRR Terms of Reference)

I’m just a guy who cares about access to civil justice in Ontario. I know a little bit about it from my day job, which includes ten years of teaching and writing about civil procedure and access to justice.

I think that public policy should be evidence-based, and should take seriously the interests of everyone who is affected by it.

Big changes are necessary to restore access to civil justice in Ontario. But if the Civil Rules Review process is rushed, and lacks the necessary evidence, it could easily do more harm than good.

Ontario’s government wants to make big changes to the Rules of Civil Procedure, and it wants to make them very quickly.

Civil Justice Watch keeps track of Ontario’s Civil Rules Review, and of what people are saying about it.

Do you or your organization have thoughts about the Civil Rules Review? Are you making a submission to the Civil Rules Review?

Please send it to me. It is not clear whether the CRR will make all the submissions they receive public, but I will upload any that I receive to this site.

Toronto Star, May 19, 2025

Read the Toronto Star coverage of the Civil Rules Review: https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/lawyer-groups-are-deeply-concerned-about-proposed-changes-to-civil-lawsuits-in-ontario/article_9cbf4916-5d8e-4279-a169-9ad76d13ac90.html

At the 2023 Opening of the Courts ceremony, the Chief Justice explained the need for rapid reform as follows:

‘You may recall that I spoke of the need to make major changes in civil proceedings at last year’s Opening of Courts, in order to address what is now all too often a 4-to-5-year timeline to get to trial.  As I stated last year, the Court runs the risk of becoming irrelevant in civil proceedings if action is not taken now.

…

the Rules of Civil Procedure were meant to provide us with a roadmap to resolution; but instead, civil proceedings have become bogged down by process. They have become a maze that is difficult for many to navigate.  The Rules should be a tool for supporting access to justice, not a barrier.

I am grateful for the support of Attorney General Downey and Deputy Attorney General Corbett who share my vision for a civil justice system that is effective, relevant, responsive and timely.  Reform of the Rules is an essential tool to achieving those objectives and to addressing our ever-growing backlog.  I am pleased to announce that work on the details and timeframes for a revision of the Civil Rules is forthcoming. We will be working collaboratively with the Ministry to assemble a team who will dedicate their focus to a reform of the rules and to ensure that while the process will engage all the necessary stakeholders, the objective is to get this done! This is a priority project. It must be done and must be completed on an expedited basis.

Each rule must be reviewed and considered to identify which are in need of reform and revision.  I would like to see the reform of the Rules completed in two years’ time.  I acknowledge this is an ambitious timeline, but to fix the problems plaguing our civil justice system, we must dedicate ourselves towards this target. Mr. Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General Corbett, I know you both support this objective.  I value your support. I look forward to working with you both to get this done.”

This piece by Allison Spiegel (one of the Co-Chairs of the Civil Rules Review) appeared in the Globe and Mail on September 6, 2017.

Every year I give this to my Civil Procedure students as a good illustration of one of the problems confronting out system.

“Canada is consistently touted as one of the best countries in which to live, but it ranks an unimpressive 112 out of 190 countries according to the World Bank’s enforcing contracts indicator. For good reason: Our civil-justice system is on the fritz. Litigating a civil claim (e.g. contract claim, property rights claim, etc.) can take many years and cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Although you may know about some of the problems plaguing our civil-justice system, you probably don’t care. In fact, you probably believe that this problem doesn’t affect you. You are wrong. An ineffective civil-justice system is bad for our economy, and everyone, including you, is affected by the strength of our economy.

As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) explains, the ability to properly protect contractual and property rights encourages investment, promotes economic relationships and fosters innovation. The World Bank succinctly concludes that efficient contract enforcement is essential to economic development and sustained growth. To put it more bluntly, in order for our economy to function properly, people need to believe that contractual, property and other legal rights mean something. But they can only mean something if they are enforceable.

To understand why, ask yourself whether you would buy a house if you didn’t believe that you could prevent someone from squatting in your backyard. Or whether you would deliver $70,000 worth of goods without a contract. But you have a signed contract, you say – good for you. Now ask yourself how you will react when you learn that your contract is effectively unenforceable.

Luckily, in today’s world, people still believe that a signed contract means something. At least until the person is faced with a breached contract, calls a lawyer and learns that, despite the strength of the claim, it may ultimately not be worth the time, cost and risk to fight until the bitter end.

From a purely economic, risk-management perspective, a civil claim worth less than $75,000 (and that figure is probably low) being brought in the Greater Toronto Area using a local lawyer is rarely worth fighting to a final determination. In most cases, the potential recovery is simply not large enough to justify the risk.

That is not to say that parties should always walk away from claims worth less than $75,000. Ultimately, most claims settle because reasonable parties seek to avoid mutually assured destruction. In choosing to start the process, however, potential claimants must factor in the possibility that their opponent will be unreasonable, in which case the claimant must be prepared to go all the way.

The problem does not disappear with claims worth more than $75,000. I recently attended a pretrial hearing in which the presiding judge implored the parties to settle. He explained that, from a purely economic risk-management perspective, proceeding with a three-week trial for a $500,000 claim would likely not be worth it in the end. He explained that both parties were likely to lose, with one party losing much more than the other. Although I agreed with him for the most part, his message boiled down to this: In our system, parties are better off settling than rolling the dice.

This all raises the question: If it does not make economic sense to enforce a contract and a party is effectively required to settle for cents on the dollar, is that contract really worth the paper on which it is written? Similarly, if it does not make economic sense to enforce other legal rights we think we have, do we really have them? Without the security of knowing that one’s legal rights will be protected, people will be less likely to transact – and fewer transactions are bad for business and, thus, bad for our economy.

Unfortunately, fixing our civil-justice system will not be easy and, seemingly, there is little appetite to tackle the problem.

More money. Cases take too long to be heard, and therefore cost too much, in part because there are too few judges, too few courtrooms and too little technological innovation. While the rest of the world moves forward, our judicial system remains firmly entrenched in the past – relying on fax machines, process servers, paper documents and in-person appearances.

Lawyers with more skin in the game. It is naive to believe that a lawyer’s course of conduct is not affected by his or her financial incentives. Every client’s goal is to achieve the best result as efficiently as possible. Under the widely used billable hour model, however, lawyers make more money the longer a case drags on and regardless of the end result. In some ways, a client’s financial incentives are diametrically opposed to those of its lawyer. Clients should retain lawyers whose billing structures provide them with the appropriate financial incentives. Value-based billings and flat fees are two such models: they ensure lawyers are rewarded for efficiency and results.

A change in culture. Although the rules governing the system and the judges who enforce them are increasingly paying lip service to the idea that litigation costs should be proportional to the amount at stake in the litigation, they have not gone far enough. Deadlines should be tightened, the rules should be stricter and the courts should enforce both – even if it means that some cases are decided based on non-compliance with technical rules. Ironically, the system’s quest for near-perfect justice results in a lack of justice.

The granting of adjournments is a simple example of the problem; they are handed out like candy on Halloween. Every last-minute adjournment, however, causes a tremendous amount of wasted time and money. It is akin to walking into a final examination for which you have spent weeks studying, only to be told that the exam has been postponed by four months.

Although the legal community needs to be driving the train for change, it cannot solve the problem alone. The lack of public pressure translates into government inaction. Said otherwise, the government doesn’t care because you don’t. But you should care because, one day, you may need to rely on a perfectly drafted contract that is, practically speaking, unenforceable.“