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.
Long Waits. Silent Openings.
The Superior Court of Justice in Toronto uses an online booking system for certain types of civil hearings.
Wait times are long. In March 2026, the average wait for certain Associate Judge motions exceeded 200 days. For some hearing types, 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 a new calendar. Sometimes one at a time, when parties cancel. Since November 2025, Courtready has recorded 55 single-day events where the wait for at least one hearing type dropped by 50 days or more. Forty-five 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 five months, we have. Below are three patterns the data reveals.
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.
Average wait times across all nine hearing categories dropped from 171 days in November 2025 to 110 days in March 2026. Seven of nine categories improved. Two worsened.
Between November 2025 and March 2026, a Civil Case Conference could have been booked within seven days on 58 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.
How long do you think this would take?
You are counsel (or a self-represented party) in a civil action in the Superior Court of Justice. You need to bring a motion before an Associate Judge. It is a straightforward motion, under 75 minutes, to be heard in person.
How long do you think you would wait for the first available date?
The average wait for this motion in March 2026 was 207 days. That is nearly seven months from when a party books the earliest available date.
Between November 2025 and March 2026:
The wait for this motion is not a number. It is a moving target. And there is currently no way for litigants to be notified when an earlier date becomes available.
What the data shows.
Explore the data below from November 2025 to March 2026.
Get notified when an earlier date appears.
There has to be a better system, for litigants and for the courts. Court time is a precious resource. No available date should ever be wasted because no one knew it existed.
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.
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.
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.
Zheng, T. M. (2026). Toronto Court Delays: The Case for a Better Booking System. Courtready. https://courtready.ca/toronto-court-delays-research-report/