About Company

We are now focusing our efforts on projects that are incremental, targeted, and meet the expectations of court and tribunal users and the public. And we are seeing some early successes. For example: We are piloting a system in four cities to allow people to file certain Small Claims Court matters online. Over the past month, about seventeen per cent of small claims, on average, have been filed online each week. My hometown of Ottawa has had the highest percentage with nearly thirty per cent of plaintiff's claims filed online. Many of them were done outside of regular business hours - imagine people filing in their pyjamas. Of the four hundred and fifty-four cases filed electronically in the province, twenty-four have already resulted in people filing for default judgement. This system will be rolled out across the province early in the new year. In April we launched a new online service, in partnership with the judiciary, which is making it easier for people to find out where and when they need to go to court. In the first six months alone, the online court lists website has received more than two hundred and thirty-thousand visits. And in the coming year we will: Continue to develop an easy-to-use online service to make it faster for parents to set up or change child support payments, without having to go to court. Implement a Search Warrants Tracking System pilot in Toronto that we will assess for province-wide rollout. The system will allow court staff, regardless of where they are, to easily search for and find warrants. And we will continue to work in partnership with the police to enhance our Crown case management system, called SCOPE, which enables electronic disclosure. The system is currently in place in Toronto, and we will expand it across the province to give all Crown prosecutors access to this valuable technology. So we are already making progress. But we must continue to build on this momentum in the months and years ahead. That is why we are taking a long, hard look at our complex processes, technologies and organizational structure. To that end, the ministry has been working with Gartner Consultants, an international expert in research and technology. With their help we are developing a vision for 21st century processes and technologies, and identifying the steps we need to get there. This is exciting work, and is something we've never done before. But this work is by no means complete. As I said at the outset, it is only through collaboration that we will succeed. Today we will be presenting you with the initial results of that work. We want, and need, your input to further refine our plans. It will be an ongoing discussion that won't end when you leave here. As integral justice sector participants, we need your help to define and champion change across the system. While money can help solve some access to justice problems like legal aid eligibility - it cannot solve everything. Given our fiscal climate, the reality is that other priorities tend to take over, such as balancing the budget and job creation. But this should not - must not - weaken for a moment our resolve to address this pressing issue. It will take effort, and it will mean thinking in new ways. Tough decisions will need to be made. But through partnership, we can meet the challenge. There are lots of ways we can deliver better service to the public, and at less cost to us. Each of you has to be part of the change. As I said before, the best solutions come from those in the system. I've highlighted a number of exciting projects today. But we will be working collaboratively, through initiatives such as our roundtable, to ensure that these and other projects truly address the challenges on the ground, with solutions that have been developed on the ground. And it starts today, right here in this room. We owe it to ourselves as committed justice sector participants. But more importantly, we owe it to the thousands of people like Julie, Sam and Amir who rely on our justice system. Ladies and gentlemen, I call on each and every one of us to create better justice, together.