Is Ontario Really The Litigation Capital Of Canada?

It is a commonly held belief that Ontario is the litigation capital of Canada. With more lawyers than any other province, a greater population and far larger economy, this idea is intuitive and easy to believe.

However, the question remains; are individuals and corporations located in Ontario more likely to litigate than those located elsewhere? With no immediate answer at hand aside from anecdotes and conjecture, I decided to investigate.

In order to analyze how much litigation is taking place in Canada, I looked at the number of Court decisions there are from Canlii for each province from January 1st, 2014 to December 31, 2016. I chose those years to standardize the input as some jurisdictions do not have data from prior to 2014, while others have not entered decisions for 2017 yet. The data is imperfect as it includes some Court decisions for matters such as costs motions and other non-trial decisions, but for the most part, provides an accurate picture on the