Updated Notice to the Profession for Toronto

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice’s Notice to the Profession for the Toronto Region was amended effective March 18, 2021. Regarding civil matters, direction is provided on filing documents for motions and applications.

All materials for use on a motion or application must be first be filed through the Civil Submissions Online portal and then uploaded to CaseLines. Parties may seek leave at a hearing to refer to documents on CaseLines that have been submitted for filing through the Civil Submissions Online portal, but which have not as yet been accepted by the Registrar.

Affidavits of service should not be uploaded to CaseLines unless there is a dispute regarding service or unless the affidavits are otherwise required for use during the hearing.

After uploading documents to CaseLines for motions and applications, parties should upload revised indexes for all records and briefs, adding the correlating CaseLines page numbers for each document.

For all long motions and applications, each party must file and upload to CaseLines a compendium containing only brief portions of the cases and brief portions of the evidence to which each party intends to refer during the hearing.

Where portions of cases are included in the compendium, the name of the case, citation, and the headnote from each case should be included. Where portions of the evidence are included in the compendium, the first page of the document and identification of where it may be found in the record should be provided.

Although this is not a new requirement, the court provides a reminder that long motions and applications in Toronto must be confirmed one month and one week before the hearing date.

Counsel should review the Notice to the Profession before proceeding with motions, applications, and pre-trial conferences in Toronto.