TORONTO — Starting next week, members of the public, litigants, and lawyers in Toronto will gain unprecedented online access to the court system as the province launches the first phase of its Ontario Courts Public Portal, a multi-year modernization project aimed at transforming how people interact with the justice system.
The new portal, set to go live on Tuesday, will allow users to file court documents, pay fees, and access virtual hearing links for a range of proceedings — including Superior Court family, civil, small claims, bankruptcy, Divisional Court and enforcement matters, as well as provincial court family cases. Criminal cases are not included in this initial rollout.
Attorney General Doug Downey said the $166-million digital system will make Ontario’s courts more transparent, accessible, and efficient, offering the public the ability to manage their cases online while maintaining traditional paper options.
“It’s going to create a significantly more accessible and robust system that will help the public have transparency and access their own court cases, filings, paying for things, getting documents out of the system,” Downey said. “The approach is digital first, not digital only.”
Phase 2, slated for 2027, will incorporate criminal matters, with a province-wide rollout planned for 2030.
The push toward modernization was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic but had long been on Downey’s agenda. “When I became attorney general in 2019, you still couldn’t pay for a filing with a credit card,” he said. “I was on a mission to modernize the system.”
Superior Court Chief Justice Geoffrey Morawetz called the portal “a historic transformation” and “long overdue,” noting it will replace disconnected legacy technologies with one integrated, user-centred platform across all areas of law.
The portal is being delivered in partnership with Thomson Reuters, which was awarded the contract in 2023. Downey said using an existing platform allowed the province to move faster than starting from scratch.
The previous Liberal government spent over $10 million on a similar initiative before abandoning it in 2013. This time, officials say, the new system is built to deliver results — and bring Ontario’s courts firmly into the digital age.