On July 24, 2023, Regional Senior Justice Firestone issued a memorandum to the profession advising of upcoming changes to the consolidated practice direction in the Toronto region. Further to RSJ Firestone’s memo, the changes are being made in efforts to reduce delay and increase efficiency.
Below, I summarize some of the key changes that will be implemented on September 4, 2023:
- “Placeholder” motions will be eliminated.
- The requirement that any date requisitioned for a short or long motion before a judge or associate judge be vacated if the Notice of Motion is not filed with the filing fee within 10 days of the requisition will be strictly enforced. In short, counsel should only be requisitioning dates if they can ensure the Notice of Motion and filing fee can be promptly filed thereafter.
- Express Court for short motions.
- Motions that do not fall within the requirements for in-writing motions, and will require no more than a 15-minute hearing may be scheduled in an “express court”.
- Case Conferences for Short Motions where an oral hearing is required.
- All short motions and applications (with the exception of summary judgment motions), appeals from Associate Judges and the Consent and Capacity Board all must proceed to a case conference before the hearing can be scheduled.
- Introduction of Calendly.
- Calendly is a cloud-based scheduling tool that allows the parties to canvass the court’s availability and request an appearance before the court directly, without needing to contact the scheduling office to seek dates. Calendly is currently successfully used in other regions, and will be piloted in the Toronto Region beginning September 4th. Calendly is also currently used in the Toronto Region for certain Family law matters.
You can expect to see these amendments available on the SCJ website on September 4th. It will be interesting to see if any of these changes, particularly the use of Calendly, will be implemented into the Estates List.
We will keep our readers updated.
Thanks for reading!