Search that phrase, and you mostly get Washington. Page one is filled with the American federal rulebook and a row of US states, none of which govern a lawsuit filed in Brampton, Sudbury, or Windsor. Ontario runs on its own regulation, and that regulation is midway through its biggest rethink in a generation.
The short answer: in Ontario, the rules of civil procedure are R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 194, made under the Courts of Justice Act. They govern civil cases in the Superior Court of Justice, the Divisional Court and the Court of Appeal. Reg. 194 fixes how you start a claim, when a defence falls due, and what you must disclose. It also fixes what a refused settlement offer costs.
Key takeaways
- Reg. 194 runs Superior Court civil cases. Small Claims Court has a separate rule book.
- Issuing a claim costs CA$243. Defending costs CA$194, a motion CA$339, the trial record CA$859.
- A defendant served in Ontario has 20 days to defend, or 30 days with a notice of intent to defend.
- Oral discovery is capped at seven hours per party, and three hours under simplified procedure.
- Simplified procedure is mandatory at CA$200,000 or less.
- Ontario’s reform report of December 15, 2025 is not law yet. As of August 2026, none of it is in force.
The shape of an Ontario action, step by step
| Step | Rule | Timing | Court fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Issue the statement of claim | Rule 14 | Serve it within six months of issue | CA$243 |
| Notice of intent to defend | Rule 18.02 | Buys the defendant 10 extra days | CA$194 |
| Statement of defence | Rule 18.01 | 20 days if served in Ontario, 40 elsewhere in Canada or the United States, 60 anywhere else | CA$194 if no notice was filed |
| Affidavit of documents | Rule 30.03 | Within 10 days after pleadings close | None |
| Examinations for discovery | Rule 31.05.1 | Seven hours for each party, total | None |
| Motions | Rule 37 | Motion record, and a factum where required | CA$339 |
| Set the action down for trial | Rules 48.14 and 48.02 | Within five years of starting it | CA$859 for the trial record |
What Ontario’s rules of civil procedure actually cover
Reg. 194 applies to civil proceedings in three courts: the Superior Court of Justice, the Divisional Court and the Court of Appeal for Ontario. Contract disputes, negligence claims, shareholder fights, estate litigation and judicial review all sit inside it.
Three big categories sit outside. Family cases follow the Family Law Rules. Criminal matters follow the Criminal Code and its own procedure. And anything worth CA$50,000 or less belongs in Ontario’s Small Claims Court, which runs on a lighter rule book with cheaper filing fees and no formal discovery stage.
None of this has any connection to the American federal rules that dominate the search results. Different country, different courts, different numbering. US pleading standards will not help you draft a claim for the Superior Court.
What changed recently, and what is still only a proposal
This is where most explainers go stale. Three sets of amendments have already landed, and a fourth, much larger set is drafted but not yet law.
- June 16, 2025. O. Reg. 50/25 retitled Rule 49 from “Offer to Settle” to “Settlement”. It added Rule 49.14, which requires a settling party to tell the non-settling parties about a partial settlement within seven days.
- October 6, 2025. O. Reg. 221/25 modernised enforcement under Rule 60, including electronic issuance of writs of seizure and sale.
- February 1, 2026. Your chosen courthouse now needs a rational connection to the dispute, so venue shopping invites a transfer motion. New prescribed forms apply by filing date, which catches motions in files opened years earlier, and parties must state whether they want an in-person, virtual, or hybrid hearing.
Behind those sits the larger project, the Civil Rules Review. The Superior Court of Justice launched it in January 2024 under co-chairs Justice Cary Boswell and Allison Speigel. Phase 1 was reported in May 2024, and then a consultation paper landed on April 1, 2025. Its working group delivered a final policy report on December 15, 2025.
That report proposes three tracks instead of the current structure. There would be an Application Track, plus a Trial Track for everything else. In between sits a Summary Track for money or personal property claims above the CA$50,000 Small Claims ceiling but under CA$500,000. It targets a dispositive hearing within roughly two years of the close of pleadings.
One detail is worth getting right, because plenty of commentary still has it wrong. That April 2025 consultation paper proposed scrapping oral discovery altogether. Its final report softened that: parties on the Trial Track may conduct focused examinations, if they want them, limited to 90 minutes per party. Drafting is Phase 3, and no in-force date has been published. Until the government files the new regulation, the old rules are the live ones.
Starting the case: an action or an application
Ontario gives you two front doors, and picking the wrong one wastes months. An action begins with a statement of claim. It carries pleadings, documentary disclosure, oral examinations, and eventually a trial with live witnesses. It suits any case where the parties disagree about what happened.
An application begins with a notice of application under Rule 14.05. A judge decides it on affidavits and cross-examinations on those affidavits, usually in a single hearing, with no discovery stage. Applications work when the facts are largely agreed, and the fight is about interpreting a document, a statute or a trust. Statutes often say a matter must proceed this way.
Short of time on a limitation period? A notice of action buys you 30 days to serve the full claim. Once the registrar issues a statement of claim, you have six months to serve it, and you serve an individual personally or by an accepted alternative under Rule 16.
Miss the defence deadline and the plaintiff can note you in default, then ask the registrar for default judgment on a liquidated claim. Judgment can follow without you ever seeing a courtroom.
Not every grievance belongs in this court at all. A worker injured on the job usually cannot sue the employer and instead claims through the compensation system. Enforcement of employer duties runs through Ontario’s occupational health and safety regime rather than a civil claim.
What it costs to move a file through the Superior Court
Court fees are prescribed by regulation, and they are not trivial. According to the Ontario government’s published schedule of civil court fees, updated on April 9, 2026, issuing a statement of claim costs CA$243. That same fee covers a notice of action or a notice of application. A statement of defence costs CA$194, and a notice of appearance costs CA$172.
Numbers climb from there. Every notice of motion served on another party costs CA$339. Requisitioning default judgment costs CA$177. Filing the trial record for the first time costs CA$859. Run three contested motions before trial, and you have spent more than CA$1,000 on motion fees alone, before a single lawyer’s hour.
If those amounts would keep you out of court, ask about a fee waiver. Ontario grants them on an income test, and the form goes in with your first document rather than after you have paid.
Discovery: documents first, questions second
Discovery is where Ontario cases gain weight, and it happens in two stages. First comes documentary discovery. Each side swears an affidavit of documents listing every relevant document in its possession, control or power.
Three schedules split that list: what the party will produce, what it claims privilege over, and what it once held but no longer has. That affidavit is due within 10 days after pleadings close, and it binds you: withhold a document, and you may be barred from using it at trial.
Rule 29.2 supplies the brake: a proportionality principle. Before ordering disclosure, a judge weighs the time and expense against the value of what would come out. She also asks whether another source holds the same information. Delay to the rest of the case counts too. No CA$150,000 claim justifies a review of ten years of email.
Then come the questions. Each party may examine the opposing party orally. Rule 31.05.1 caps that at seven hours in total, however many opponents you face. Consent or a judge’s order can extend it. Answers you promise but cannot give on the spot become undertakings, and the transcript can be read in against the other side at trial.
Motions and the motion record
A motion is how you get an interim decision: security for costs, production of a withheld document, an amendment, or the dismissal of a claim before trial. You serve a notice of motion setting out the order sought and the grounds, supported by affidavit evidence.
Your motion record is the package a judge actually reads. Under Rule 37.10, it carries a table of contents, the notice of motion, every affidavit and exhibit, any transcripts of cross-examinations, and the order sought. Judges hearing a substantive motion also expect a factum, and the moving party confirms the motion shortly before the hearing date, or it comes off the list.
Motions are also a costs risk. Losing parties normally pay, and spending CA$8,000 to win an argument about scheduling is a poor trade.
Summary judgment after Hryniak v Mauldin
Rule 20 lets a judge decide a case without a trial where there is no genuine issue requiring one. For years, judges read that narrowly. That changed with Hryniak v Mauldin, 2014 SCC 7, where the Supreme Court of Canada called for a culture shift toward proportionate procedure.
The decision gave teeth to the enhanced powers already sitting in Rule 20.04(2.1). On such a motion, a judge may weigh the evidence, evaluate credibility, and draw reasonable inferences. She can also order oral evidence on one discrete point, the so-called mini-trial. Ask whether the record lets the judge find the necessary facts, then reach a fair result faster and cheaper than a trial would.
That gamble runs both ways. Bring a motion that should have been a trial, and Rule 20.06 lets the court order substantial indemnity costs against you. Documentary cases with a clean paper trail win these motions. Credibility contests between two witnesses rarely do.
Rule 49 offers and the costs consequences that settle cases
Most Ontario files settle, and Rule 49 is the reason. An offer served at least seven days before the hearing begins, and left open, switches on an automatic costs consequence once the judgment is known.
Beat your own offer as a plaintiff, and you recover partial indemnity costs up to the date you served it, then substantial indemnity costs afterward. Substantial indemnity is defined as 1.5 times partial indemnity, so the multiplier alone changes the arithmetic of pushing on.
Defendants get the sharper end of it. Suppose a defendant offers CA$120,000 in year two, the plaintiff refuses, and the trial ends three years later with judgment for CA$95,000. That plaintiff still wins, but recovers costs only to the date of that offer and then pays the defendant’s partial indemnity costs for everything after it. Those later years are the expensive ones, and the costs award can swallow the judgment.
Rule 24.1 also puts mandatory mediation on the calendar in Toronto, Ottawa and Windsor, within 180 days of the first defence.
Simplified procedure and the CA$200,000 line
Rule 76 is compulsory, not optional. If your claim is exclusively for money, real property or personal property and is worth CA$200,000 or less, excluding interest and costs, it must proceed under simplified procedure.
Trade-offs come with it. You get three hours in total to examine all other parties combined, rather than seven hours each. Trials are capped at five days. Juries are unavailable except in a short list of claims: slander, libel, malicious arrest, malicious prosecution and false imprisonment.
There is a sting for anyone who ignores the threshold. A plaintiff who proceeds under the ordinary procedure and then recovers CA$200,000 or less can be denied costs entirely. Plaintiffs sitting just above the line sometimes abandon the excess to buy the cheaper, faster track.
Where to go next
Deadlines under this regulation are unforgiving, and the costs rules punish the party who misjudges a settlement offer by a few thousand dollars. If you have been served, or you are weighing a claim worth more than the Small Claims ceiling, get advice before the clock runs out.
Frequently asked questions
They are R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 194, a regulation under the Courts of Justice Act. It sets out the steps, deadlines, forms and cost consequences for civil proceedings in the Superior Court of Justice, the Divisional Court and the Court of Appeal.
Twenty days if the plaintiff served you in Ontario. Forty days for service elsewhere in Canada or in the United States, and 60 days for service anywhere else. Filing a notice of intent to defend adds 10 days.
CA$243 to issue the claim, CA$339 for each motion you bring, and CA$859 to file the trial record. Legal fees dwarf those amounts, and a losing party normally pays part of the winner’s costs on top.
Yes. At CA$200,000 or less for money or property claims, Rule 76 applies whether you like it or not. A plaintiff who dodges it and then recovers under that figure risks getting no costs at all.
No. The final policy report arrived on December 15, 2025, and the drafting phase is still running, so in August 2026 the existing regulation governs every step. Watch for the amending regulation rather than the commentary.
