Advocates' association found that the US and Australia beat Canada at tracking court case data
Courts across Canada lag behind their US and Australian counterparts when collecting key data metrics on cases, which makes it challenging to effectively address court delays and other issues, according to a report by the Advocates’ Society.
Published last week, the legal association’s report recommended eight data metrics courts consistently track and publish to “help paint a picture of a court’s overall operational health and the adequacy of its resources in relation to its workload.”
These metrics are the number of pending cases, new cases, and completed cases; the age of pending cases; the median time between case filing and disposition; the median time between case filing and trial; the number of pending cases per judicial full-time equivalent; and the average number of court appearances before disposition.
According to the Advocates’ Society’s analysis of the most recent information published by Canada’s courts, the majority of provincial and territorial courts track and report between zero and three of these metrics for civil and family cases. The Ontario Court of Appeal fared best, reporting four of the metrics across its civil, family, and criminal cases.
Courts were generally better at tracking data related to criminal cases, reporting between zero and six of the metrics identified by the Advocates’ Society.
Of the federal courts, the Supreme Court of Canada led the way in reporting, publishing five of the key metrics as of 2023. The Federal Court of Appeal reported three metrics, while the Federal Court reported four.
Meanwhile, the US district courts – the nation’s federal courts – published seven metrics as of 2024, while Australia’s courts published six. The courts in the member states of the Council of Europe published three.
Across Canada’s courts, “the data is just really not there,” the Advocates’ Society president, Darryl Cruz, told Canadian Lawyer on Monday. “Some courts are better than others, but on the whole, the public and lawyers and judges don’t have good insight into how efficient we are and where there might be problems.”
He adds, “We all agree the system needs to be improved, but where and how – it’s really difficult to say without this information.”
The Advocates’ Society’s report notes that the US federal courts’ data is notable for “the level of detail, reported on a year-over-year basis and across multiple courts, which allows for ready comparison and analysis.” This includes the civil and criminal workloads of district and appellate courts, as well as data on filings, terminations, pending cases, number of judgeships, filings per judgeship, and median times to trial or disposition.
The Council of Europe, meanwhile, produces a bi-annual report about the justice systems in 44 member countries. This report looks at various metrics, such as the justice budget per capita and as a percentage of GDP, available human resources, incoming cases, clearance rates, and disposition times for civil, criminal, and administrative matters.
Because the US and Council of Europe data are consistently updated and cover a range of subjects, they allow for easy comparison and analysis, the Advocates’ Society said.
In contrast, several of the most recent reports the association relied on to produce its Canadian analysis were over a decade old.
The Advocates’ Society argued that improving Canada’s justice system will require courts to make a more concerted effort to capture, analyze, and publish data on its operations and resources. In turn, the association said governments need to provide courts “with the tools, resources, and expertise they need to collect, analyze, and report their data and to employ data-driven decision-making.”
Cruz says access to technological tools is a substantial barrier to collecting data, noting that courts with electronic filing capabilities are much better equipped to produce data than courts without.
