The Trial Track: Discipline Without Illusion

The Trial Track is where the Working Group in its Final Policy Report^[1] shows its hand. It is not trying to abolish the conventional trial. It is trying to end the fiction that a conventional trial, under the current system, is a realistic default destination for most civil cases.

The trial has become the system’s rhetorical anchor but, in practical terms, it is often an illusion that’s too far away, too expensive, too easy to adjourn, and too easy to postpone through procedural drift. The Trial Track reforms aim to keep trials for the cases that genuinely require them while imposing the one thing Ontario trial litigation has historically lacked, namely a credible timetable that is difficult to ignore.

The architecture is built around a single organizing event: the One-Year Scheduling Conference.

The One-Year Scheduling Conference: A Hard Touchpoint, Not a Polite Check-In

The Working Group initially considered tying the One-Year Scheduling Conference to the Close of Pleadings, but it recognized a basic administrative reality that the Court cannot reliably know when pleadings are closed without investigation, and that is unworkable at scale. So the onus is put where it belongs on the parties.

The claimant must schedule the One-Year Scheduling Conference within ten days of the Close of Pleadings. If the claimant does not, any other party may. This is not window dressing. It is a deliberate shift away from the culture of passive case progression, where parties can collectively do nothing and the Court politely waits.

The conference is then meant to occur approximately one year from the Close of Pleadings, with a further expectation that trial will be scheduled roughly one year after that, after a transition period. For a two-party case, the working goal becomes blunt, to hold a trial within about two years of the Final Defence being filed.

That is a major promise, and it should be treated as such. If it holds, it rewires incentives across the entire system including disclosure, settlement strategy, mediation seriousness, even file valuation. If it does not, the reform risks becoming another aspirational timetable that counsel learn to sidestep.

The Default Scheduling Conference: The System’s Anti-Languishing Device

The report does not rely on goodwill to keep files moving. It anticipates inaction and builds a mechanism to counter it.

If, within one year of issuance of the Notice of Claim, a One-Year Scheduling Conference has not been scheduled and default judgment has not been obtained against all defendants, the court will automatically schedule what the Working Group calls a Default Scheduling Conference.

That is an important structural point. It means there is a backstop against the familiar Ontario pathology where the file that simply sits. The goal of the Default Scheduling Conference is to assess where the case stands and issue directions designed to get the matter to a One-Year Scheduling Conference within a year.

Just as importantly, the report imposes a consequence for parties who have not met their procedural obligations. A party who has failed to comply, for example a claimant who has not met service obligations or default timelines, or a defendant who has failed to defend, will be barred from seeking two forms of relief that the new model otherwise allows: placement on the Inactive List and extension of the evidence-exchange period. In other words, you do not get the benefits of flexibility if you have been the cause of inertia.

That is exactly the kind of rule that signals seriousness. Not because it is punitive, but because it prevents parties from turning “case management flexibility” into a reward for delay.

What the Trial Track Actually Requires: Front-Loaded Readiness

A Trial Track case begins the same way as every other case in the new model. The claimant commences with a Notice of Claim and identifies, on Appendix “A,” that the matter presumptively belongs on the Trial Track.

Pleadings are completed. Then the procedural posture changes. The parties are expected to engage in the up-front evidence model before the One-Year Scheduling Conference arrives.

The logic is straightforward. When the parties reach the Court for scheduling, they should not be arriving with a vague sense of the issues and a promise to “get to discovery.” They should be arriving having already exchanged the core evidence, narrowed the factual disputes, and positioned the file for real trial planning.

The default timetables reflect that design. In a two-party case, they contemplate:

• early delivery by the claimant of witness and will-say statements, reliance documents, and timetables for expert evidence and focused examinations;
• responsive timetables from defendants;
• defence witness and will-say statements and reliance documents;
• supplementary document requests and responses;
• focused examinations;
• undertakings;
• a window for discovery disputes;
• and then simultaneous reply witness statements and supplementary reliance documents before the One-Year Scheduling Conference.

The key point is not the month-by-month mechanics. The key point is what this timetable is trying to normalize. Witness statements and core evidence are to be prepared early, when recollections are freshest, and exchanged as a standard practice rather than a late-stage scramble.

That is a profound change to how Ontario trial litigation has been lived. In the current model, witness statements are often treated as a trial-prep luxury. Here they become foundational.

Focused Examinations: Discovery as a Tool, Not a Lifestyle

The Trial Track timetable also presumes a move away from sprawling oral discoveries toward focused examinations, supported where necessary by written interrogatories. The design is to preserve the truth-seeking function of discovery while stripping away its bloated, strategic, and often wasteful excess.

This is consistent with the broader logic of the reforms to reduce the number of expensive procedural steps that can be used to delay, and force the parties to build a record that actually supports a hearing.

If discovery becomes narrower but the evidence record becomes stronger, the system gains what it has long lacked, a meaningful adjudication as an affordable alternative.

What Happens at the One-Year Scheduling Conference

The One-Year Scheduling Conference is not meant to be a ceremonial check-in. It is a substantive case-shaping event.

The presiding judge is expected to:

• confirm whether the up-front evidence model has been completed, and if not, address breached interim deadlines and impose a fixed completion timetable;
• ensure expert schedules are defined, and convert them into enforceable orders;
• schedule outsourced mediation if one has not already occurred;
• on request and consent, schedule a Binding Judicial Dispute Resolution hearing;
• where appropriate, facilitate settlement discussions and order a judicial settlement conference;
• fix the Trial Management Conference date;
• set a timetable for sworn witness statements where only will-say statements exist;
• and, most importantly, fix the trial date, aiming for it to occur within twelve months.

This is the moment where the Trial Track stops being aspirational and becomes real. After this conference, the parties are under a Court-ordered timetable, and consequences for non-compliance are intended to follow.

Ontario has always had scheduling conferences of sorts. What it has not had is a standard model that forces the parties to arrive trial-ready, with evidence substantially exchanged, and then sets a trial date with a defined target window.

Departures, Inactive List, and Extensions: Flexibility with Guardrails

The Working Group knows that not every case can be trial-ready in two years, and it builds controlled flexibility.

On consent, parties get a one-time right to reschedule the One-Year Scheduling Conference either earlier (if they are ahead) or up to one year later, for one of two purposes, to place the matter on an Inactive List for up to a year, or to extend the evidence exchange period from one year up to a maximum of two.

If consent is not available, a party can seek an early Scheduling Conference, usually within thirty days of receiving the One-Year Scheduling Conference date, and the Court has discretion to accelerate, place the matter on the Inactive List in defined circumstances, stage the evidence exchange (liability now, damages later), or extend the evidence exchange period up to two years where justice and the Goals require it.

The examples given matter. This is not open-ended indulgence. It is targeted flexibility for cases where damages have not crystallized, injuries have not stabilized, or where trauma-informed considerations warrant staging the litigation. It is also an acknowledgement that some cases involve extraordinary documentary burden or institutional complexity such as situations where large organizations that genuinely cannot marshal disclosure in the same timeframe as an individual litigant.

The guardrail is explicit. These options are meant to be lost if the Court has had to intervene through a Default Scheduling Conference because the parties failed to do what they were supposed to do. Again, flexibility is preserved, but it is not turned into a reward for inaction.

Directions Conferences Instead of Scheduling Conferences: When the Case Isn’t Just About Timing

The Report also recognizes that some cases will require substantive Court involvement before the One-Year Scheduling Conference can do its job.

If a party seeks transfer to the Summary Track, or seeks interlocutory relief that goes beyond scheduling, the parties will attend a Directions Conference instead of the One-Year Scheduling Conference. And if that Directions Conference occurs within sixty days of the scheduled One-Year Scheduling Conference, the Court will address the interlocutory issues, deal with everything that would have been handled at the One-Year Scheduling Conference, and vacate the original scheduling date.

This is a practical feature. It prevents the schedule from becoming ceremonial when real disputes need to be resolved, but it still forces those disputes into a defined conference structure rather than letting them spawn satellite motion practice by default.

The Real Question: Will the System Use Its Own Tools?

The Trial Track proposal is disciplined, and it is honest that Ontario has lacked firm touchpoints, early evidence exchange, and trial dates that arrive before a file collapses under its own weight.

But it will only succeed if judges are given the time, administrative support, and institutional permission to enforce it. A model that depends on conferences will not work if conference time is scarce, if judges are overloaded, or if trial dates remain subject to easy rescheduling.

The Working Group is trying to make trials real again, not by romanticizing them, but by compressing the path to them and stripping away the procedural excuses that have made them unattainable for ordinary litigants.

That is discipline without illusion.