3.1 Courts of Justice Act Provisions for Public Access

Section 137 of the Courts of Justice Act (CJA) provides for public access to civil court documents.

Upon payment of the prescribed fee, members of the public are entitled to see any current list maintained by the court of civil proceedings commenced, any documents filed in a civil proceeding, or any judgments entered, unless a statutory provision, common law rule or court order restricts access.

3.2 Statutory Restrictions to Public Access

Statutory provisions restrict public access to the following civil court documents:

3.2.1. Documents Regarding Parental Responsibility Act Matters

Documents filed in the Small Claims Court in relation to the Parental Responsibility Act that include evidence obtained under the Young Offenders Act (YOA) or Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) must be treated like Young Offenders Act or Youth Criminal Justice Act documents and are not publicly accessible. See section 2.2.1 for details on public access to these documents.

3.3 Files and Documents Under Publication Bans

In general, when the court imposes a publication ban, the public can still access the court file and documents. Staff must tell the person who is accessing the file or document that it is under a publication ban and must warn him or her that publication could be a violation of law.

3.4 Sealed Files and Documents

If the court seals a court file or document, access is only permitted by order of the court.

3.5 Index Books

Civil index books contain lists of court file numbers and names of the plaintiffs and defendants. In civil cases, information in index books is publicly available at no charge.

3.6 Case Event Lists and Post-Court Dockets

Subject to orders of the court and the statutory restrictions outlined in section 3.2 above, the post-court docket and case event lists are public documents and may be viewed at no charge. A copy of the docket or list can be provided to members of the public, upon payment of the relevant copy fee (see Section 7.3 on Copy Fees).

NOTE: Due to storage limitations in the court office, some older court dockets and case event lists may not be immediately available at the court counter. The time required to access older dockets and case event lists that are not stored in the court office might be longer.

3.7 Other Documents Related to Civil Proceedings

Other documents may be contained in the court file, even though they have not been filed in the proceeding within the meaning of s. 137 of the Courts of Justice Act. As section 137 does not apply to these documents, they are not automatically publicly accessible. Some examples of these documents include:

• correspondence between the trial coordinator and the parties to canvass available dates for events;
• correspondence between the court office and an individual regarding fees paid to court (e.g., regarding an NSF cheque);
• correspondence between the court office and an institution/agency (e.g., police) necessary for the institution/agency to enforce or register an order; and
• fee waiver information.

These documents must be filed in the correspondence pocket within the court file. Court staff must remove the correspondence pocket from the file before providing the file to a member of the public for inspection. However, if the court staff require someone to provide a document to the court before "filing" something further (e.g., court staff require a letter explaining, for the purposes of rule 61.13 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, why certain parties have not been served), that document, even if it is the form of a letter, should be placed in the part of the file that is publicly accessible and not in the correspondence pocket.

3.8 Providing Information Over the Telephone

Publicly accessible information is available over the telephone.

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