Category: Slaw Columns

Ontario v Doe: The 30 Hour Lawsuit 

Noel Semple

Slaw.ca, May 29 2026 https://www.slaw.ca/2026/05/29/ontario-v-doe-the-30-hour-lawsuit/

If you think civil lawsuits take way too long in Canada, you’re in goodcompany. But one high-profile suit recently went from claim to final hearing in less than 30 hours. Ontario v Doe was certainly an unusual case, and one that has been widely debated for reasons that have nothing to do with civil procedure. And yet it also offers three important lessons for people who care about making justice speedier in mainstream civil litigation.

The Facts: A Last-Minute Injunction

A rally was planned for the afternoon of Saturday March 14th, on University Avenue in downtown Toronto. Just before 3pm on the day before (March 13), Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced that he would instruct the Attorney General to seek an injunction forbidding the rally.

Ontario’s application record and factum were sent to the Superior Court of Justice at 10:52 a.m. the next morning. Responding materials from the event organizers arrived at 11:44 a.m.

The Hearing: in a Hurry

The oral hearing started before Justice Robert Centa at noon, just three hours before the rally was planned to begin.

An awkward moment occurred early on. The law is clear that Attorneys-General are to act independently, and yet the Premier had told the Province the day before that he had “instructed” the AG to bring the application that was now being brought. Justice Centa asked about this, and accepted the representation of the AG’s lawyer that the decision to bring the application was the AG’s alone.

After two hours of submissions and questions, Justice Centa dismissed the Attorney General’s application at 2:05 pm. His Honour’s written reasons were released before the end of the day.

The Decision

Justice Centa found “no evidence” in the record that the rally would attract or encourage violence, or that it would create any material risk of injury (at para 21). Freedom of peaceful assembly is guaranteed by section 2(c) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the police were already mandated to respond to any criminality that might occur. For these reasons, the application to pre-emptively cancel the rally was dismissed.

The premise of the decision — that the police would be able to handle any problems arising from the rally — seems to have been vindicated. Two individuals involved in a counter-protestwere arrested for relatively minor offences, but media accounts of indicate no injuries or damage to property.

Why Ontario v. Doe Matters: not for Con Law, but for Civ Pro

The case will not make it into any constitutional law books. No new law was developed, and it wasn’t a “close call” delineating the boundaries of the law. A quia timet injunction against Charter-protected assembly requires strong evidence, and according to Jutice Centa’s reasons the applicant’s record came nowhere close.

However, I do plan to teach Ontario v. Doe in my civil procedure class, for two reasons.

1. A Minimum Viable Product for Civil Procedure?

First, it proves just how quickly a case can get from “glimmer in the client’s eye” to final adjudication. Slowness is considered by many to be the biggest problem with the civil justice system in Canada.

Ontario’s Civil Rules Review is trying to cut the timeline-to-trial for the average civil case in half, from the current 4 or 5 years down to 24 months. Some observers doubt this is possible, without a major infusion of new judicial resources.

Ontario v Doe demonstrated that justice can be done in about 30 hours, or roughly 1/700th of the average time-to-trial sought by the Civil Rules Review. Of course it was an exceptional case, a purported emergency, and the procedure applied to it was not as thorough as it might have been. And yet, this procedure might be considered a “minimum viable product” for those trying to devise a workflow for civil lawsuits that is both quick and just.

In software development, the minimum viable product is the version stripped down to only its most essential elements. After an MVP is developed, more features can be added, if and only if their benefit can be proven to justify the costs they add in time and money.

Ontario v Doe included the essential bits of civil procedure: pleadings, evidence, argument, adjudication, and written reasons.

An interesting experiment would be to start with Ontario v Doe’s 30-hour procedure and then determine the necessary additions to make it viable for a broader variety of cases, instead of trying to find stages that can be cut from the current five-year timeline.

2. A Benchmark for Quick Work?

The blistering pace of Ontario v Doe might also be a useful benchmark, for evaluating the more leisurely efforts of justice system participants in other cases.

  • Justice Centa drafted written reasons, which seem reasonably thorough to this reader, in six hours after the hearing on March 14th. Must we really allow six months (730 times as long) as the timeline for judges to release written reasons, as do the Canadian Judicial Council’s Ethical Principles (at page 27)?
  • If the lawyers in Ontario v Doe prepared serviceable factums overnight, should any factum require dozens of billable hours, stretching over many weeks, for counsel to prepare?

The answer to both these questions might be “yes.” And yet this model of speedy justice switches the onus to justify more time-consuming efforts, in a provocative and helpful way.

3. Why People Litigate

The third lesson from Ontario v Doe, for students of civil procedure, is about why civil claims are brought in the first place. Civil procedure assumes that, in general, a party litigates because they believe their position has legal merit. It also assumes that parties are interested in settling, and will welcome opportunities to do on a reasonable basis.

Ontario v Doe is a reminder that some civil claimants don’t want to settle, may not believe they are correct in law, and may not even want to win. They may be litigating mostly to send a message to a group or constituency not directly involved in the case.

Starting a lawsuit can:

(i) Garner political or material support from other opponents of the defendant,

(ii) Make the claimant appear to be a victim of wrongdoing or agent of justice, and/or

(iii) Deflect critical attention away from the claimant’s own conduct, toward the defendant.

Pursuing such goals is more attractive if, as in Ontario v Doe, the legal fees can be paid by someone else (i.e. the taxpayers of Ontario). Such a litigation strategy would also be made more attractive by the fact that, for reasons that not entirely clear to the author, Justice Centa made no costs award against the unsuccessful applicant.

Going to Court in Good Faith?

There are a few reasons to question whether this particular application might have been not only unfounded in law, but also brought in less-than-impeccable-faith:

  • If Ontario genuinely believed the rally posed a threat to public safety or fostered hate speech, it could have brought its injunction application much sooner than 24 hours beforehand. The timing of the March 14 rally was predictable, given that its predecessor events had occurred every year in Toronto for over a decade.
  • If seeking in good faith to protect public safety, Ontario would probably have sought to negotiate with the rally organizers to address its concerns on a consensual basis, before resorting to litigation.
  • It could also have introduced legislation to refine the balance between Charter freedoms and public safety or the prevention of hate speech, not only for this protest, but for all others going forward.

The loss in court might not have been unanticipated or even unwelcome. The Premier was able to declare himself “extremely disappointed” in the outcome, and file the government’s “effort” to prevent the rally for future highly targeted political communications. The entire episode seemed to be complete in one news cycle, until a new chapter unexpectedly dropped in May of 2026. The organizers of the rally are now suing the Premier for defamation, based on the March 13th news conference which started it all.

For civil-proceduralists, the good news from Ontario v Doe is that it is possible in principle to do civil justice much faster than we are doing it in the average case today. The bad news is that starting civil lawsuits will always be appealing to some whose motives are far indeed from the legitimate purpose of civil procedure.

Courting Culture Change for Access to Justice

Noel Semple

Forthcoming, Slaw.ca, October 2024

Why are some restaurants great, while others are so lousy?  The great ones don’t usually have better ingredients in the kitchen, or better written policies, or even more talented people. 

Usually, they have better culture.  The folks leading and working in great restaurants have developed expectations, attitudes, and social practices that produce terrific results, night after night.

What if the same is true of justice systems?  Maybe culture is the reason why some courts, tribunals, and segments of the bar consistently produce substantively just outcomes after processes that are quick, affordable, and procedurally fair.  And maybe culture is the reason why others don’t.

Continue reading “Courting Culture Change for Access to Justice” →

How Singapore Beat Court Delay

Noel Semple

Singapore’s courts were a mess in the late 1980s. There was a five year backlog of cases, and the average commercial matter took between five and six years to resolve. Hearing dates were being set as much as two years in the future.

These timelines may sound familiar, if you’re involved with Canada’s civil courts. The numbers are eerily similar here right now.

And yet what happened in Singapore in the 1990s should encourage Canadians who want to see speedier access to justice in our country. A dramatic improvement was delivered, in only ten years. By the end of the decade, the backlog had been eliminated and the average commercial case was being disposed of in fifteen months. 95% of civil cases, in fact, were resolved within 365 days of their statements of claim.

Continue reading “How Singapore Beat Court Delay” →

A Sounder Footing for Ontario’s Tribunals: The Fewer Backlogs and Less Partisan Tribunals Act

Noel Semple

Slaw.ca Column, March 26th 2024

A Sounder Footing for Ontario’s Tribunals: The Fewer Backlogs and Less Partisan Tribunals Act

A Bill recently introduced to Ontario’s Legislature can tangibly relieve the crisis of access to justice and politicization in the province’s tribunals, and blaze a path to better appointments for adjudicators and judges across the country. The Fewer Backlogs and Less Partisan Tribunals Act was introduced by Liberal MPP Ted Hsu, and will be debated in the Ontario Legislature on April 18th.

Ontario’s high-volume tribunals — especially the Landlord & Tenant Board, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, and the Automobile Accident Benefits Service — have been afflicted by dire access to justice problems in recent years. The root cause of the notorious dysfunction was the Ford government’s decision to refuse reappointment to almost everyone initially hired before the 2018 change of government. This deprived tribunals of their most experienced leaders and members. Politicization has also undermined tribunals’ internal culture and made it much more difficult to attract high-quality replacements for those who were dismissed. This was compounded by the provincial government’s rash decisions to force all hearings online and adopt a flawed and untested case management system.

Ted Hsu’s Fewer Backlogs and Less Partisan Tribunals Act seeks to place tribunals permanently on a sounder footing, by insulating them from politicization and purges. It would establish an Adjudicative Tribunal Justice Council, the leaders of which would include retired judges, experienced administrative lawyers, and representatives of the public. Most members of the Council would be appointed not by elected officials but rather by nonprofit groups that understand and care about administrative justice.[1]

The Adjudicative Tribunal Justice Council would, in turn, take the lead in ensuring that Ontario’s tribunals are efficient, speedy, and professional. The Bill would mandate the Council to monitor tribunal operations, and to identify problems and solutions. Perhaps most importantly, the Council would also vet recruitment plans for tribunal members and Chairs. Here, the priority would be on finding highly meritorious, diverse, and professional people who can do the challenging but essential work of resolving disputes and adjudicating.

Cabinet officials would still make the final appointments, but they would have to act quickly on the Council’s recommendations and explicitly justify any refusal to follow them. The Bill also guarantees that, once initially appointed, hardworking and high-performing tribunal members would no longer be subject to politically motivated termination. That fate has befallen many in Ontario in the years since 2018.

For Hsu, who represents Kingston and the Islands, hearing from people again and again who have suffered from tribunal delays i motivated him to introduce the Bill. Hsu’s Fewer Backlogs and Less Partisan Tribunals Act draws on a Model Act drafted by Ron Ellis, who was the leading champion of administrative tribunal justice in Canada before his passing on December 3rd, 2023.

A Better Alternative to Cabinet-Dominated Appointments?

Problematic executive-branch appointments of judges have been in the news at both the provincial and federal levels:

  • Premier Doug Ford has politicized Ontario Court of Justice appointments, by stacking the Judicial Appointments Advisory Committee with partisan appointees, while also publicly demanding that judges incarcerate more people.
  • Federal judicial appointments have proved problematic for a different reason, namely struggles to fill judicial vacancies quickly. The Federal Court has taken the very unusual step of castigating the Federal government for this.

The Fewer Backlogs and Less Partisan Tribunals Act may point the way to an appointment process which is professional rather than political, and which is likely to be speedy and efficient as well. While this Bill applies to tribunals rather than courts, tribunals are an integral part of the justice system. If passed, the FBLPTA will ensure that the entities that hear the most common civil disputes (tribunals) will benefit from an apolitical, efficient process for appointments. Section 14(4) of the Bill requires the executive branch to appoint Members recommended by the Council within 60 days, or give reasons for declining to do so.

This Bill won’t fix Ontario’s tribunals mess right away, but it will create a secure foundation for tribunal justice in the medium term. In the long term, it might be the beginning of a less political, more reliable way to appoint adjudicators in tribunals and courts, across the country.

________

[1] These are the Society of Ontario Adjudicators and Regulators, the Association of Community Legal Clinics of Ontario, the Administrative Law Section of the Ontario Bar Association, and the Federation of Ontario Law Associations.

Tribunals: The Access to Justice Advantage

Noel Semple

Imagine suing the federal government without a lawyer, making your case before a neutral adjudicator, and then getting an enforceable decision, on the merits, less than four months later. This may sound like a far-fetched fantasy if you’re familiar with civil litigation in Canada. In our courts, civil lawsuits routinely take 4-5 years to get to adjudication. Legal fees average about $40k per party to get through a 5-day trial. Self-representation is a frustrating and overwhelming ordeal for most people who try it.

And yet the four month path to adjudication is not just an idle fantasy to ponder while you wait 18 months to get your civil motion heard. It describes the Social Security Tribunal of Canada (SST), a federal tribunal established to hear appeals of government decisions regarding benefits. SST litigants can be represented by lawyers, but 75% of them proceed self-represented, sometimes with help from a friend or family member (which is also allowed). The SST procedure and rules were consciously designed to be accessible. “Navigators” employed by the SST help litigants understand the process and prepare for their hearings for the hearing, at no charge. 95% of individuals who use the SST procedure report that they are satisfied by it. When SST decisions are appealed to higher courts, they are seldom overturned.

The SST is recognized as one of the best-functioning tribunals in Canada. (Ontario’s high-volume provincial tribunals, by contrast, are struggling badly.). But there are many tribunals in Canada that deliver a level of access to justice which courts cannot match. Tribunals, in the words of Madam Justice Rosalie Abella, are “designed to be less cumbersome, less expensive, less formal and less delayed,” which lets them “resolve disputes in their area of specialization more expeditiously and more accessibly, but no less effectively or credibly” than courts would. The best tribunals provide access (quick, cheap, and low-stress procedure). They do so without sacrificing justice (substantively correct rulings, adherence to procedural justice, and a public and transparent process).

What explains the success of best-in-class tribunals in creating access to justice? Obviously, it has something to do with the nature of the cases that they deal with. These tend to be factually and legally simpler than civil court matters are. And yet tribunals also have three key features that distinguish them from courts and allow them to excel in A2J terms:

  1. Each tribunal is specialized and focuses on a particular type of legal dispute. Most courts have generalist jurisdiction. Even if a court is specialized (e.g. family court) the judges are often generalists who rotate in and out. Thus, tribunals can hire or train people who know all about the law and facts that repeatedly arise in a particular class of dispute. They need not all be lawyers. Non-lawyer tribunal members (who bring very valuable perspectives) can learn the law that they need to know because the tribunal’s jurisdiction is limited.
  2. Tribunals take a measure of institutional responsibility for creating access to justice, instead of simply assigning each case to an individual who must do so single-handedly. Many tribunals assign panels of multiple members to hear matters, not only in an appellate or reconsideration hearings but also at first instance. For tribunals — unlike courts — internal deliberations or peer review prior to release of a tribunal decision, involving members who did not themselves participate in hearing it, are permitted in Canadian law. Tribunal members’ performance can be reviewed and measured against benchmarks (e.g. for prompt release of decisions).
  3. Designability is a third feature of tribunals that distinguishes them from courts. Tribunals can be planned and built from the ground up to maximize their performance in delivering access to justice for a particular class of legal dispute. This is much more difficult for courts, which are constitutionally independent and thus beyond the power of government to redesign.

None of this is meant as a criticism of Canada’s courts. They have different strengths, including Canada’s most brilliant legal minds on the Bench as well as constitutional independence from government. Courts are equipped to do things that tribunals cannot. However tribunals have enormous potential to create access to justice for Canadians, and this potential has not yet been fully tapped.