Statistics from the Ministry of the Attorney General show wait times to file family matters at Brampton’s Superior Court of Justice reached nearly five times the ministry’s standard earlier this year

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Most court filing is still done in person in Ontario. While many attorneys can afford to hire process servers or law clerks to file court documents for their clients, unrepresented members of the public must take care of this task themselves. And the more individuals there are filing family matters in fast-growing Peel Region, the longer the lines grow at Brampton Superior Court.

Statistics from the Ministry of the Attorney General show that average wait times to file documents at Brampton’s Hurontario Street courthouse, the A. Grenville and William Davis building (named for the province’s former premier, who might be troubled by the hardship being caused inside for some of his fellow Brampton residents) are some of the longest in the GTA.

According to the ministry, the “standard is to provide counter service to court clients in 30 minutes or less.” But in early summer, average wait times to file family matters at Brampton’s Superior Court of Justice reached two hours and 20 minutes, clocking in at nearly five times the ministry’s standard.

More recent figures show that the average wait is now down to 1 hour and 12 minutes — similar to the same quarter the year before, but still far longer than most GTA courts. (Only Newmarket’s time was longer in the quarter ending Sept. 30: 1 hour 13 minutes, up from just nine minutes in the previous quarter, an anomaly the ministry said could be blamed on that court being “in the process of replacing its queuing system.”)

Court delays have received more attention in the past two years because of a precedent set by the 2016 Jordan ruling, which capped provincial and Superior Court proceedings at 18 and 30 months, respectively. But administrative bottlenecks increasingly affect individuals in contact with the legal system.

Read the rest at ThePointer.com.