ARTICLE · 27 JUNE 2024

Canada's Broken Court System Is About To Get Even Worse

Levitt LLP

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The Canadian court system is in crisis and it's only getting worse.In Toronto, it takes well over a year to have a motion heard before a judge. The shortage of judges has been well covered, but there are other cracks...

CanadaGovernment, Public Sector

Kathryn Marshall

Human Rights Commission was supposed to help alleviate strain on our court systems, until it got bogged down in a legal issue of its own

The Canadian court system is in crisis and it's only getting worse.In Toronto, it takes well over a year to have a motion heard before a judge. The shortage of judges has been well covered, but there are other cracks in the system. On June 13, five courtrooms in Vancouver and three more in Port Coquitlam were closed because of a shortage of sheriffs. As they say, justice delayed is justice denied.

One of the long-standing solutions to these problems (besides appointing more judges and hiring more sheriffs, of course) has been to move certain types of legal disputes out of the court system and into tribunals and commissions.

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