CASE EVALUATION

Case Evaluation

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How Does the Ontario Court System Measure Up?

Prior to Covid, the Ministry of the Attorney General put little time or effort into measuring the performance of the Ontario court system. Objectively, it was apparent that it was greatly underperforming its peers, but its 2018 Self-Assessment Survey instead focused upon other “metrics” such as whether cassette tapes were being labelled upon receipt. Though the Ontario court system scored itself very highly, as indicated below, the World Bank entirely disagreed.

Rating of Ontario's Court System

It should be noted that the World Bank statistics likely overstate the performance of the Ontario court system, as they are limited to the enforcement of contracts, which may be dealt with summarily or placed upon the commercial list (with performance for other types of cases, such as personal injury or family law being much worse).

Ontario vs. G7 Countries

The below chart illustrates the time required to enforce a contract in Ontario versus peer jurisdictions within the G7. While Ontario outperforms Italy, we fall well below the G7 average.

G7 Relative Performance

The below chart indicates how the Ontario court system performs against its peers within the G7 along with the relative World Bank ranking of each jurisdiction.

JurisdictionTime in Days to Enforce a ContractWorld Bank Ranking (lower is better)
France44716th
Germany49913th
Italy1120122nd
Japan36050th
Ontario910100th
United Kingdom43734th
United States44417th

Comparator Countries According to the World Bank

The below chart illustrate the time required to enforce a contract in Ontario versus peer jurisdictions from the World Bank ranking. Note the substantial performance gap Ontario exhibits with each developing country.

Comparators to the Ontario court system

Peer Country Relative Performance

The World Bank ranked the performance of all countries in its survey. Canada (Ontario) finished 100th, slightly ahead of South Africa, and slightly behind Tongo. Interestingly, Ontario has a much higher income per capita than the developing countries, who apparently, are our legal peers. Likewise, the courts in each “peer country” operate substantially faster than in Ontario, as indicated below.

JurisdictionWorld Bank Enforcing Contracts ScoreGDP Per Capita in 2019 (USD)Time in Days to Enforce a Contract
Tonga98$6,3831350
Lesotho99$2,7042615
Ontario100$46,2093910
Fiji101$13,6844397
South Africa102$12,4825600

OECD High-Income Member Performance

The below chart extracts the performance data of the OECD high-income countries from the World Bank statistics, sorted by the number of days to enforce a contract. Again, Ontario performs well below average. The quality of our Judicial procedures lags countries such as Greece, Slovenia and Turkey and falls well short of our G7 peers such as the US or UK.

JurisdictionTime to Enforce Contracts in days (lower is better)Cost (as % of claim value - lower is better) World Bank Enforcing Contracts Score (higher is better)World Bank Country Ranking (lower is better) Quality of Judicial Processes (1-18 - higher is better)
New Zealand21627.2%71.523rd9.5
South Korea 290 12.7% 84.1 2nd 14.5
Luxembourg 321 9.7% 73.3 18th 8.5
Mexico35033.5%6743rd9.5
Japan36023.4%65.350th7.5
Lithuania37023.6%78.87th15
United States37022.9%73.417th15
Austria39720.6%75.510th13
Australia40223.2%796th15.5
Iceland4179%69.133rd7.5
United Kingdom43745.7%68.734th15
France44717.4%73.516th12
Estonia45517.3%76.18th13.5
Latvia46923.1%50.8131st13.5
Sweden48330.4%67.639th12
Denmark48523.3%73.914th14
Finland48516.2%66.445th8.5
Germany49914.4%74.113th12.5
Belgium50518%64.356th8
Spain51017.2%70.926th11.5
Netherlands51423.9%59.978th7
Chile51925.6%64.754th10
Norway5989.9%81.33rd14
Switzerland59824%64.157th10.5
Hungary60515%7125th12.5
Turkey62324.9%71.424th15
Ireland65026.9%57.991st8.5
Czech Republic67833.8%56.4103rd9.5
Poland68519.4%64.455th11
Portugal75517.2%67.938th13.5
Slovak Republic77520.5%66.146th13.5
Ontario91022.3%57.1100th11
Israel97525.3%58.985th13.5
Italy112027.6%53.1122nd13
Slovenia116012.7%54.8112th11.5
Colombia128845.8%34.3177th9
Greece171122.4%48.1146th12.5
[1] The World Factbook – Tonga.

[2] The World Factbook – Lesotho.

[3] Wikipedia List of Canadian Provinces and Territories by Gross Domestic Product and Bank of Canada Average Annual Exchange Rates.

[4] The World Factbook – Fiji.

[5] The World Factbook – South Africa.

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