Chief Justice Geoffrey Morawetz and Attorney General Doug Downey spoke on the CL Talk podcast
Ontario’s profession is “stuck” in the civil area, Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Justice Geoffrey Morawetz said on a recent episode of CL Talk, Canadian Lawyer’s podcast. He joined Ontario Attorney General Doug Downey to discuss why now is the moment for a sweeping rewrite of the province’s civil rules, how they hope to cut timelines in half, and what lawyers across the province should expect as the system shifts from traditional discovery to an upfront evidence model.
Below is a summary of the conversation:
If civil justice in Ontario is going to remain relevant, “you have to compress the timeline,” Chief Justice Geoffrey Morawetz told the CL Talk podcast. “It just takes far too long… four to five years. To me, that means that the system almost becomes irrelevant.” That blunt assessment sets the tone for a sweeping Civil Rules Review led by Morawetz and Attorney General Doug Downey – an initiative pitched not as reform, but as a reset.
The Ontario civil courts, long burdened by procedural complexity, ballooning discovery demands, and systemic delays, are being targeted for a complete overhaul. Downey and Morawetz are calling time on a model they say no longer serves the public. “We have to do better,” said Morawetz. “The rule of law… requires the ability to have individuals… protect their rights through an accessible process. Justice delayed is always said to be justice denied.”
Downey tied the push for change to the modernization forced by the COVID-19 pandemic. “We managed to bring the justice system forward, quite frankly, decades, in a matter of months,” he said. “It was time to do the next biggest thing that will have the biggest impact.”
The trigger point wasn’t a commission or political crisis, but a rare alignment between the province’s top judicial and executive authorities. “Judges can’t do it alone. The lawyers can’t do it alone. You need a partner, and that’s called the Government of Ontario,” Morawetz said. “Now’s the time to get on with it.”
The project has its foundations in a working group co-chaired by Justice Cary Boswell and Brampton litigator Allison Speigel. Morawetz insisted on a group that wasn’t dominated by Bay Street. “It was important that this not be a Toronto-centric group,” he said. “Very important that you have [younger lawyers]… They’re the ones who’ve got a stake in the game for the next 20, 30, 35 years ahead of them.”
Chaired jointly by a judge and a litigator, the group spans perspectives across the province. “The profession is entirely engaged at this point,” said Downey. “Lawyers across the spectrum have been engaged in a way that I have not seen in my decades of involvement in the legal world.”
The centrepiece of the proposed reforms is the “up-front evidence model” – a departure from the familiar cascade of pleadings, affidavits, rolling productions, and long-delayed discoveries. Instead of producing evidence in staggered waves, parties would be expected to disclose the evidence they plan to rely on early in the process. “It requires parties to focus up front,” said Morawetz. “One of the driving points that we’re trying to change is really to compress the timeline… to bring that down to two [years].”
The model abandons the traditional relevance-based standard of disclosure for a reliance-based one. “The production of documents – the email dump – can result in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of emails,” Morawetz said. “When you… get down to a trial, how many are you going to rely on? Probably under 50.”
It’s a clear attempt to strangle procedural sprawl before it begins. The goal is “meaningful and timely disclosure,” with early trial dates acting as a forcing mechanism.
But the most disruptive proposal – and the most contested – is the elimination of oral examinations for discovery. This is “not something that’s new. It's not revolutionary. It is already in place in the United Kingdom, and I believe New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and others,” said Morawetz. “You’re replacing discovery with another method… but the objectives are still the same – to end up with… the production of documents [in] the truthful way.”
For critics, removing oral discovery risks eroding fact-finding rigour. The Federation of Ontario Law Associations (FOLA) and other legal organizations have raised concerns, urging the government to slow the process. Downey rejected the calls: “Delay is exactly what this is about… Everybody knows that we need change,” he said.
As Law Times reported in another article, advocacy groups warned that such changes risk undermining litigation effectiveness, especially in personal injury and complex multi-party cases. But Downey doubled down: “Give us your ideas. Don’t tell us what not to do. Tell us what to do.”
It’s not just lawyers who’ll have to adapt. “This isn’t just lawyers working differently… The judges will take a lead role in moving things through the system,” said Downey.
That shift includes tighter timelines, fewer adjournments, and enhanced case management. “In certain areas of the province, we have a motion culture,” said Morawetz. “If you can reduce the number of motions and have your associate judges and judges… getting far more involved in trials, you start to envision a different type of a system.”
The Phase Two consultation paper emphasizes fixed hearing dates, early trial management conferences, and a stricter adherence to scheduling. “Quite often we’ll have cases right now where discoveries cannot be scheduled for months… because the lawyer schedules do not align,” Morawetz noted. “That’s going to end.”
Implementation is expected to begin later this year, once the consultation window closes in June. Downey described the feedback process as wide-open: “They’re all going in the box, and we’re going to open the box at the same time.”
If the proposals stick, the civil justice system would be restructured around the premise that access and efficiency aren’t competing goals – they’re prerequisites for one another. “This system is designed, fully implemented, to reduce that wait time from five years down to two,” Morawetz said. “Change is never easy. It’s never smooth. But… to me, that’s not acceptable.”
And while critics have called parts of the plan radical, Morawetz pushed back: “Everything that’s in the proposals in the phase two report exists somewhere… They’ve done an awful lot of work.”
This conversation can also be found here:
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