Published April 2026 · Data through April 26, 2026

Toronto Court Delays: The Case for a Better Booking System

Courtready has tracked the earliest available hearing dates for nine types of civil proceedings at the Superior Court of Justice in Toronto every day since November 2025. This report examines why the current booking system has room for improvement.

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The Finding

Long Waits. Silent Openings.

The Superior Court of Justice in Toronto uses an online booking system for certain types of civil hearings.

In general, wait times have improved. However, there were stretches where no date was available to be booked at all.

But the data reveals something else. Earlier hearing dates appear in the booking system constantly. Sometimes in blocks, when the Court releases new slots. Sometimes one at a time, when parties cancel. Since November 2025, Courtready has recorded 64 single-day drops where the wait for a given hearing type fell by 50 days or more. Fifty-two of those drops reached 100 days or more.

None of these openings are announced. No list is published. No alert goes out. The only way to catch them is to look constantly. For six months, we have. Below are four patterns the data reveals.

1 Dates are released in batches.

Multiple hearing categories can improve simultaneously when the Court releases a new block of dates. The Court does not publish a schedule of when these releases happen.

2 Waits are long; but improving.

Average wait times across all nine hearing categories dropped from 171 days in November 2025 to 104 days in April 2026. Seven of nine categories improved. Two worsened.

3 Last minute openings exist. But nobody is told.

Between November 2025 and April 2026, a Civil Case Conference could have been booked within seven days on 72 separate days. These openings appeared without warning and disappeared just as quickly. There is currently no way for litigants to be notified when an earlier date becomes available.

Nov 2025 Apr 2026
Under 7 days 8 to 90 days No dates
4 No dates to be booked.

Some hearing categories had stretches where the booking system displayed no available dates for booking. Of the nine categories tracked, five had at least one such stretch.

A Better System

Get notified when an earlier date appears.

Tom Macintosh Zheng

Right now, the earliest available court date often goes to whoever refreshes the booking page the most. A better system would notify every party when an earlier date opens, so everyone has a fair chance.

Tom Macintosh Zheng

Co-founder of Courtready

Courtready built the Toronto Court Dates Finder to demonstrate what a notification layer could look like. Parties select a case type. The site watches the booking system. When an earlier date opens, the party is notified.

Methodology

How we did this.

01 Daily observation

Since November 1, 2025, Courtready has captured the earliest available hearing date for nine types of civil proceedings at the Superior Court of Justice in Toronto. Observations are taken daily through Courtready’s Toronto Court Dates Finder, which automatically scans the Court’s online booking system at regular intervals. The ‘gap’ value reported throughout this report is the number of days between the observation date and the earliest available hearing date offered by the system.

02 Scope

Nine hearing categories are tracked: Associate Judge motions under 75 minutes (in-person and virtual), Associate Judge motions 90–120 minutes (in-person and virtual), Civil Case Conference, Civil Practice Court, Express Court, Small Claims Rule 12 motions, and Small Claims non–Rule 12 motions.

03 Monthly averages

Monthly averages exclude days where no booking was available. Days with no dates available for booking are recorded separately.

04 Batch and single-day events

‘Batch release’ events shown in Card 1 are identified where two or more categories improved by 50 days or more on the same day. Single-category day-over-day drops of 50 days or more are counted separately and reported in the Finding section.

05 Limitations

Not all categories of civil hearings are measured in this study. Dates released through other means, such as motions heard directly by a judge or matters booked through the Commercial List, are not captured.

About

This research is led by Tom Macintosh Zheng, former Toronto-based commercial litigator and co-founder of Courtready. Tom is this year’s winner of the Ontario Bar Association’s OBA Foundation Award.

For media inquiries, email tom@courtready.ca.

Cite this research

Zheng, T. M. (2026). Toronto Court Delays: The Case for a Better Booking System. Courtready. https://courtready.ca/toronto-court-delays-research-report/