Ontario lawyers are reminded that, effective January 1, 2010, the Ontario Small Claims Court will raise its monetary limit from the current $10,000 to $25,000, bringing it in line with many other provinces that have made this move in recent years. The trend toward higher limits in Canadian Small Claims Courts is expected to improve access to justice for low and middle income Canadians. Recent studies suggest that the average cost of a three-day trial in the civil courts is about $60,000, prohibitively high for most Canadians. Access to the lesser administrative requirements and shorter timelines of the Small Claims Court should improve those figures.
The true test, however, will be whether Small Claims Court systems can accommodate the potential increase in court filings. Currently in Ontario, about half of all civil actions are filed in the Small Claims Court already. That proportion is expected to increase significantly in coming years under the new limit. In particular, some employment lawyers suspect that there will be a significant increase in the number of wrongful dismissal actions pursued in the Small Claims Court as many such disputes involve sums less than $25,000.
The experience in British Columbia might allay some of those concerns, however. When the B.C. Small Claims Court raised its limit to $25,000 in 2005, there was only a minor increase in caseload volume. Many believe this was due to the fact that, under the lower limits, many litigants were reducing their claims to qualify for the Small Claims procedure. When the limit was raised to $25,000, those same types of litigants simply remained. And for claims beyond $25,000, the Simplified Procedure in the higher courts remains a reasonable option.
In general, increased limits in the Small Claims Court equate to improved access to justice... clearly a good thing.