Talk:Court system of Canada

Removed "Etiquette" section
I removed the "Etiquette" section. It seemed ridiculous, a bunch of silly pithy jabs at U.S. culture, starting with the introductory statement

''A good Canadian law student or lawyer should be wary of watching American courtroom dramas as he or she may risk embarrassing him or herself when appearing and advocating in a real Canadian court. Canadian courtroom etiquette far more resembles that of England than that of the United States.''

Hurr Hurr Hurr, U.S. sux. It's a good idea, just poorly executed. And plus the formatting on that section is god-awful, looks like it was copied and pasted from somewhere. - Kade 20:49, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Page move (2005)

 * The following discussion is closed. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

(from WP:RM)

Courts of Canada &rarr; Canadian court system
I merged the Courts of Canada article with the original Canadian court system as they were pretty much the exact same thing. The better of the two was Courts of Canada so I kept that one, however the Category name is "Canadian court system" so it would be more appropriate to name the article according to that title -- PullUpYourSocks 02:42, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There was an identical article called Canadian court system that I merged with this one, but not much material from the other one survived. Moreover, I renamed this one to the more appropriate title of "Court system of Canada" see Requested_moves for comments. I trust no one has any strong feelings against it. - PullUpYourSocks 19:52, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Comments on page move

 * Support. This seems sensible. Jonathunder 02:47, 2005 Jan 13 (UTC)
 * Oppose - this move disagrees with the general direction given at WikiProject Countries to use "Entity of Country". -- Netoholic @ 03:01, 2005 Jan 13 (UTC)
 * Oppose: but not because of the guidelines (that say to not enforce them on those actively editting an article) that Netholic posted. Randomly picking an external link (http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/) the title is "Courts of British Columbia". And other random court links I chose.  It's clear the sites use "Court of" so I guess the category needs to be changed to match. Cburnett 04:05, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Support. Articles are "X of Y" where it makes sense; such is not the case here.  ADH (t&m) 04:36, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Pointless move.  --Tony Sidaway|Talk 23:01, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Support either of the two suggested names. -Sean Curtin 05:51, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)
 * Support the article is about the court system not just the courts. - SimonP 04:12, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)
 * Then perhaps Court system of Canada? -- Netoholic @ 04:52, 2005 Jan 13 (UTC)
 * Looks like PullUpYUourSocks liked this suggestion and moved the article. It seems that the only thing needed would be to merge the history of Canadian court system with Court system of Canada. -- Netoholic @ 06:35, 2005 Jan 14 (UTC)
 * Once the compressed block issue is done, this can be done:
 * Delete Court system of Canada
 * Move Canadian court system to Court system of Canada
 * Restore Court system of Canada
 * Edit historical version to be current, if needed.
 * - UtherSRG 02:00, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Quebec judges
Three judges are required by the Supreme Court Act to come from Quebec.

See the text here:


 * 6. At least three of the judges shall be appointed from among the judges of the Court of Appeal or of the Superior Court of the Province of Quebec or from among the advocates of that Province.

Meaning of "v." in case citations
''The "v." in the case's title means "and" and not "versus", even though the parties are adversaries. Likewise, the case of R. v. Morgentaler (Canada's criminal law appeal legalizing abortion in 1988) should be cited as "The Queen AND Morgentaler".''

The "v." does mean "versus" because when you cite a case in french the "v." becomes a "c.", which stands for "contre". I'm not too sure about oral citations but the "v." definately doesn't stand for "and".--Nickcin2000 14:02, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

''The "v." does mean "versus" because when you cite a case in french the "v." becomes a "c.", which stands for "contre". I'm not too sure about oral citations but the "v." definately doesn't stand for "and"''

I know that "v.", during oral citation, is pronounced as "AND" and not "VERUS" or "V". When I attend English-language civil court hearings, the judges and lawyers say "AND" when citing a case name containing the "v.".--Alf74 12:42, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Comment on Jury trials
{The jury selection process is a major part of a trial. Up until recently the government prosecution had a huge and unfair advantage in jury selection with 52 to only 12 objections or stand asides to potential jurors. Basically it was possible for the government to handpick the jury. In one case they were able to impose an all female jury on a man accused of physical assault on a woman. The supreme court of canada lacked the probity to rule against this injustice but some years later the federal government decided that the so long accepted jury selection process was unconstitutional. The government prosecutors have many unfair advantages such as being able to impose a jury trial where none is wanted or indeed feared and being able to arbitrarily impose fitness to stand hearings. Most canadians believe they are guilty to proved innocent and point to the fact that canada has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world. The process of federal government review of possible wrongful convictions is unfair because it denies the wrongly convicted rights if they have any outstanding charge, no matter how minor. How open to abuse the system is when all the police have to do is bring another charge to obstruct the process. Those fighting wrongful convictions are in grave jeopardy because their conviction can be used against them should they exercise their right to testify in their own defense. As support look up the 35 pages of legal sophistry by the supreme court of canada Biddle, Eric R. concerning the all female jury or contact toronto lawyer Leo Adler concerning the review of wrongful conviction ongoing 12 years and necessitating flight from canada in 2000. Eric R. Biddle ericbiddle@hotmail.com

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.152.235.192 (talk) 23:37, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The Graphic at the top of the page could be improved
There are a few things about the graphic at the top of the page that could be improved.

1. It's not correct that all appeals go from the Provincial Courts to the superior trial court, and then to the Court of Appeal. In criminal matters, it is correct that summary conviction matters are first appealed from the Provincial Court to the superior trial court, but if a matter is tried by indictment in a Provincial Court, the appeal goes straight to the Court of Appeal.

2. It's not correct that all appeals/judicial review of administrative bodies go first to the superior trial court, then to the Court of Appeal. It depends on the statutory framework in each province. In some cases, appeals go straight from certain administrative body to the Court of Appeal.

3. The same point applies to the federal administrative agencies. While in most cases, the Federal Court has jurisdiction for judicial review of federal boards and tribunals, s. 28 of the Federal Courts Act provides that for the major federal boards (e.g. the CRTC), it's the Federal Court of Appeal that has exclusive jurisdiction for judicial review.

4. the text in the box for "Provincial Court of Appeal" should be "Provincial/Territorial Courts of Appeal".

5. the text is overflowing the boxes in some cases;  can that be fixed?

I don't mean to be too critical on these points, and I would fix them myself if I could, but I don't have the technical skills to do so.

Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 13:03, 20 May 2011 (UTC)


 * The graphic wasn't designed by any of the editors on Wikipedia. It is from the Department of Justice's website.  Anyway, to respond to the specific points:
 * 1. I believe the graphic is supposed to be representative of the heirarchy of the courts, not the appeal routes. That is, the province's superior court is higher up on the heirarchy than the province's provincial court; the federal court of appeal is higher up on the heirarchy than the federal court or the tax court; neither the tax court nor the federal court are above each other in the heiarchy.  Obviously references to a court's heirarchy is a bit of a window dressing - a superior court's criminal trial decision is not binding on a provincial court criminal judge (just persuasive), but a superior court's summary conviction appeal ruling is binding.  However, the graphic is useful that it gives a visual ideal of how the different courts are related to each other.


 * 2. Same reply as number one.


 * 3. Same reply as number one.


 * 4. Can't change the text as no one here created the image. It came from the DoJ.  If you can find a better image that isn't copyrighted, link to it here and another editor can either add it or show you how to add it.


 * 5. Same reply as number four.


 * Singularity42 (talk) 13:26, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Requested move 26 April 2016

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: not moved.  QEDK ( T  &#9749;  C ) 10:15, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Court system of Canada → Judiciary of Canada – Seems to to be the standard naming for this series of article, see also template present in the bottom of this article, and compare main articles for Category:Judiciaries and Category:Courts by country. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 07:25, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose ambiguous naming judiciary means the body of judges. While "court system" clearly refers to the court system and not the body of judges -- 70.51.46.195 (talk) 11:56, 26 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose for the reasons given by 70.51.46.195. This article is about more than the judges, but how the courts are set up, the powers of the courts, and how they relate to each other.  It also include the relationship between the courts and the administrative tribunals, which are clearly not part of the judiciary, but are under the supervision of the courts.  Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 14:30, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Rather then commenting on unreferenced wiktionary, I suggest you take a look at Judiciary. There are three equivalent terms, and we should standardize to what is the most popular one on Wikipedia already. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 09:43, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The same definition is provided by Merriam-Webster . Your proposal makes the name ambiguous, there being multiple meanings for "judiciary", so should not be used when we have perfectly usable unambiguous ones. -- 70.51.46.195 (talk) 07:08, 30 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Support: its actually a rather logical move. "Judiciary" means the entire system, not just judges. Its more succinct and can be made uniform across other nation's judiciary pages. DaltonCastle (talk) 23:14, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose as per common name Department of Justice, Department of Justice--Moxy (talk) 11:13, 27 April 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

"Exclusive control over civil law"
It is misleading and incorrect to say that the Constitution gives provinces exclusive control over civil law. Although s. 92 of the Constitution Act, 1867 gives provinces the exclusive power to legislate with respect to "property and civil rights", this is not co-extensive with "civil law". In fact many areas that are generally understood as falling under civil law fall under federal powers -- e.g. patent, trademark and copyright law; marriage; divorce; and spousal and child support when they flow from divorce. Federal law can also regulate the circumstances under which private law remedies are available to plaintiffs suing federally regulated sectors like aviation, banking and railroads. For example the Carriage by Air Act creates a partial no-fault regime respecting lawsuits against airlines. Blakes314159 (talk) 23:56, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Administrative tribunals section
This section has almost no citations and has various inaccurate blanket statements. Some parts are not particularly encyclopedic and I'm not sure that this degree of detail belongs in this article? There are only so many things you can say about administrative tribunals as a whole since they vary immensely. Does anyone object if I rework this considerably? I would expect it to be far shorter and focus more on the relationship to the court system through judicial review and statutory appeals. ShinyObjectsOnly (talk) 06:58, 1 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Go to town! See what you can do to improve it.  More cites are always welcome. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 13:13, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
 * If you’re citing a statute, there’s a citation template designed for Canadian statutes : Template:Cite canlaw
 * Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 13:21, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Etiquette and procedure
These sections have few to no citations. They're inherently problematic - each court controls it's own etiquette and procedure. So blanket statements can easily be inaccurate when made without any support. There are some inaccuracies present. Given that there's no uniform governing authority over these matters across the country, and absent any citations, I think it's best to remove a fair bit of it. It's also phrased as an explainer to those familiar with American courts, and I don't think that framing makes sense. I would like to substantially rework and shorten this, adding citations for the core aspects that are common across Canadian jurisdictions but removing a fair bit. Any thoughts? ShinyObjectsOnly (talk) 07:08, 1 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Same here. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 13:14, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I understand it may be bad form to delete things if they are potentially verifiable and could be fixed. Much of what is here might be useful or interesting to someone. But I don't have access to much in the way of sources and I still don't know that this level of detail belongs in this survey article. What do you think about the idea of creating a separate page for much of this material, moving this stuff there, and replacing it here with a brief overview of any high level key aspects? I could also fix the bullet point paragraphs there and make any easy changes that make it flow a little more. ShinyObjectsOnly (talk) 16:44, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Sources and resources
This is a note in part for my future reference and for any folks (with legal training and otherwise) wanting to contribute but not sure where to start.

I added some material from the Monahan and Shaw Irwin Law constitutional law text, since that's what I have digitally available, and will continue to do so. It is available through remote access to digital subscriptions for some courthouse libraries (BC, at least). If anyone lurking here has access to other texts (see e.g. this list at Legaltree), those would be nice to add throughout this article. Sources with an asterisk are considered leading texts.

The legal journals available on CanLII are also a good place to look for publicly available commentary, though bear in mind that the views of any one person may not be representative of general consensus and there are some people with an axe to grind. They don't appear to include any specializing in any of these matters, but law school journals cover a range of topics and are subject to editorial review as well. I did a search narrowing down to journal articles or books which comment on ss 96-101. For the uninitiated, if you enter terms in the document text box of this search you can narrow down. You can also add case citations to the search to locate scholarly commentary on a given case, e.g. this search concerning the provincial judges reference.

I don't know much about the The Canadian Constitutional Law Open Access Casebook, 2022 CanLIIDocs 1392, but it's written by two law professors and another widely published scholar so I would expect it to be reliable. However, as a casebook, the amount of commentary is limited. It's good for general explainers, to get a sense of the general consensus concerning the importance of any given case, and to identify the central leading cases on a given topic.

ShinyObjectsOnly (talk) 16:08, 2 March 2024 (UTC)


 * For my future reference, other potentially useful articles located via noting up the Judges Act:
 * - Josh Hunter and Sarah Kraicer, Keeping the Scale of Justice Balanced – Québec Justices of the Peace and Judicial Independence, 2017 81 Supreme Court Law Review 149, 2017 CanLIIDocs 3915, < https://canlii.ca/t/ss73 > (treatment of history of judicial independence cases and material concerning Quebec justices of the peace)
 * - (with caution due to date and narrow focus, but does have some general and historical information) Andre S Millar, The "New" Federal Judicial Appointments Process: The First Ten Years, 2000 38-3 Alberta Law Review 616, 2000 CanLIIDocs 130, < https://canlii.ca/t/2df9 > ShinyObjectsOnly (talk) 16:28, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Merge proposal
Provincial and territorial courts in Canada is a stub and the information is duplicated here. It appears to meet criteria to be merged here but I don't know if this would be considered controversial. Someone more experienced care to comment? ShinyObjectsOnly (talk) 16:37, 2 March 2024 (UTC)


 * I didn't even know that article existed! Yes, I think a merger would be a good thing.  I'm not sure how to request one;  will poke around. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 16:18, 3 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Right, I've checked the page on merging and we don't need to go to an administrator, just start by putting merge proposals on the two pages. I'll do that.  There's considerable overlap between the two, so the merge might amount to deleting most of the stuff on the other page, but there's a few things there that could be carried over, like the appeals and the Ontario Provincial Offences Court. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 17:27, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Excellent, thank you! ShinyObjectsOnly (talk) 17:37, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I've put a notice on the Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board, alerting that a merge proposal has been made. (That's not Canvassing, as long as it's just a neutral announcement.) Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 17:45, 3 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Survey
 * Merge: The Provincial and Territorial Courts in Canada page is a stub, and is largely duplicative of what is in this page.  Putting info on all the courts into this one article is better organization.  The parts of the other page that are not duplicative can be easily included here. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 17:35, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Merge: Mostly duplicated info. GoodDay (talk) 17:50, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Merge: The context of the distinctions between superior courts and provincial courts is important to understanding provincial courts as a whole. That is most easily done in this article. More detailed information about any given provincial court would remain on that court's page. This would match the approach taken for all other levels of court. ShinyObjectsOnly (talk) 17:51, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Merge. I agree with the above - merging into a single article Court system of Canada makes sense, due to duplicated information between the two.   PK  T (alk)  19:29, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Comment: there seems general support for the proposal, so I went to the other article to see what could be moved here. I think that the first two paragraphs already are covered by this article, and the list of provincial courts is also here. The only thing that wasn't included was the comment about the Ontario Provincial Offences Court, so I've moved it here, and deleted the rest of the other article. Will try to turn it into a redirect. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:17, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

Changes all look good to me.
Your changes and updating all look good to me! Thanks for doing it. I've done a fair bit on this article, but it's always good to have fresh eyes take a look. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 16:21, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * trying to fix my ping. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 16:24, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Glad to hear it. I don't want to jump in and change things that are there for a reason and please do let me know if I'm doing something that doesn't make sense. On that point, I wonder what you'd think about reorganizing a bit and removing some duplication? Let's say, for example, having a flow like (but with better wording):
 * - Types of courts (origin of provincial and federal jurisdiction in the Constitution and their respective roles, what's inherited from the British system, inherent jurisdiction vs statutory, explanation of superior vs provincial courts and terminology)
 * - Levels of the court system (explanation of each, likely a bit shorter with some of the previous material synthesized above)
 * And go from there. Some of this approach is there already with the initial explanations, but this might make it easier to keep similar material together and give enough context for the description of each court so as not to have to explain the concepts as much there.
 * If this does sound sensible, is it better to workshop these changes e.g. in a subpage or just go ahead with them in the main article as is? (In increments of course)

ShinyObjectsOnly (talk) 16:59, 3 March 2024 (UTC)