How to Search Court Records in Manitoba

Manitoba's Court Registry System lets anyone search Court of King's Bench and Court of Appeal case dockets online, for free, without an account. The Provincial Court, which handles more than 95% of Manitoba's criminal cases, is not in that system at all; its records can only be requested in person or by mail from the specific court office holding the file.

Information last verified on 2026-08-15. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

Manitoba's Three Courts

Manitoba has three courts. The Court of Appeal of Manitoba is the province's highest court, sitting in panels of three judges. The Court of King's Bench of Manitoba is the highest trial court, split into a General Division for civil litigation and criminal law (which also hears appeals from small-claims hearing officers and Provincial Court summary-conviction decisions) and a Family Division for family and child-protection matters, adoption and guardianship applications, and protection orders. Small Claims is administratively part of King's Bench rather than a separate court, and as of January 1, 2025 it hears claims up to $20,000, excluding interest, costs, and disbursements; a claimant can still file for more by waiving the excess. An older $15,000 figure still circulates on some third-party sites, but $20,000 is the current ceiling confirmed on the court's own pages.

The Provincial Court of Manitoba is a court of record with primarily criminal jurisdiction. More than 95% of Manitoba's criminal cases start here, and it also handles bail, first appearances, preliminary inquiries, all Youth Court cases, cases under the Highway Traffic Act and Liquor Control Act, fatality inquests, and police-conduct reviews.

Note for anyone navigating the court's own website: some of its URL slugs still read "queens-bench," a leftover from before the 2023 renaming, even though every page's title and body text now say King's Bench.

The Court Registry System: What's Searchable Online

Manitoba runs a public online docket-search tool called the Court Registry System, reached from manitobacourts.mb.ca/registry and hosted on a web43.gov.mb.ca subdomain, with three separate tools: Name Search, File Number Search, and Search Upcoming Hearings. None of the search forms present a login or a payment step, and the fee regulation covering court services has no line item for online access, so the tool appears to be free and does not require an account, though no primary source states that in so many words.

The system covers King's Bench records from multiple registry offices, with coverage starting at different dates by office: Winnipeg from 1984, Brandon and Dauphin from 2001, St. Boniface from 2001, Portage la Prairie and Thompson from 2003, Selkirk from 2003, Swan River from 2005, The Pas from 2005, Flin Flon from 2007, Morden from 2007, Minnedosa and Virden from 2008, and Steinbach from 2022. It also covers Court of Appeal records from 1991. The searchable case types include King's Bench Family, King's Bench Criminal, King's Bench Bankruptcy, King's Bench Wills, King's Bench Civil, King's Bench Small Claims, King's Bench Probate, and the Court of Appeal's own Civil, Family, and Criminal divisions.

What a search returns is docket-level information, not full document images: the file number and title, a list of filed documents with dates and brief content notes, party and lawyer names and lawyer contact information, the next hearing date, related file references, and daily hearing lists. Because coverage starts at different dates depending on the registry office, a search of an older file, especially outside Winnipeg, may not reach far enough back to find it online at all.

The Gap: Provincial Court Has No Online Access

This is the single most important fact for anyone trying to look up a Manitoba criminal case: the Provincial Court is not in the Court Registry System. Manitoba's own Policy: Access to Court Records in Manitoba states it directly: "electronic access is given to court record information of the Court of Appeal and the Court of Queen's Bench... At this time, there is no electronic access to Provincial Court records."

Because the Provincial Court handles more than 95% of the province's criminal cases, along with all traffic matters, youth cases, and first appearances, this gap covers the great majority of what most people are actually looking for when they think of a "criminal case." A Provincial Court file, whether criminal, traffic, or otherwise, has to be requested in person or by mail using a Service Request Form at the specific court office where it sits; there is no shortcut through the online registry.

Open-Court Principle and Manitoba's Access Policy

Manitoba's courts publish a formal four-page document, Policy: Access to Court Records in Manitoba, that governs all three courts. It grounds itself in the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling in Nova Scotia (Attorney General) v. MacIntyre: "covertness is the exception and openness the rule," with the burden on whoever wants to deny access. Court-record information is viewable unless specifically excluded, copies are generally permitted (some need court permission), and fees may apply.

One detail worth knowing: Manitoba's general freedom-of-information law (FIPPA) and its health-information law (PHIA) do not apply to court records. Access runs entirely through the courts' own policy, not the province's FOI regime. The policy also draws a sharp line that matters for anyone confused about what a court search actually shows: "the court record concerning a person's criminal proceedings before the court is not the person's criminal record"; a request for someone's criminal record has to go to the police, not the court.

A publication ban does not restrict access to a record, only what the person who accesses it may publish; that rule applies regardless of which court or which channel, online or in person, was used to see the file.

How to Request a Record In Person or By Mail

For anything not available through the Court Registry System, most notably any Provincial Court record, two paths exist. In person, attend the court office where the file is held and complete a Service Request Form. By mail or email, download the Provincial Court or Court of King's Bench Service Request Form, complete it, and submit it to the specific court office along with identity verification: one piece of government-issued photo ID, or two pieces of non-photo ID (an image of the ID has to be attached if mailing or emailing).

Files inactive for more than three years may be archived off-site and take several days to retrieve. Manitoba Justice publishes direct contact information, including office-specific emails, for the Brandon, Dauphin, Flin Flon, Minnedosa, Morden, Portage la Prairie, Selkirk, St. Boniface, Steinbach, Swan River, The Pas, Thompson, and Winnipeg court offices. A record-suspension (pardon) request needs an extra step: attaching the criminal-record-related civil clearance request from police to the Service Request Form; King's Bench Winnipeg matters route to a dedicated pardon-request email address.

Fees for Searches, Copies, and Reports

These figures come from the Court Services Fees Regulation, M.R. 150/2021, and were cross-checked against the Manitoba Courts' own separate fees pages.

There is no fee for these services for anyone receiving Legal Aid Manitoba services, and no fee for filing or enforcing restitution orders.

What's Off Limits: Youth, Adoption, and Child Protection Records

Manitoba's access policy permanently excludes several categories from public access, regardless of which court holds the file or which channel is used to request it:

• Youth records, in full, under the federal Young Offenders Act and Youth Criminal Justice Act. This is federal legislation applying uniformly across Canada; Manitoba's policy simply defers to it rather than setting its own rule.
• Adoption records, in full, under Manitoba's own Adoption Act.
• Child-protection court records, in full, under Manitoba's Child and Family Services Act; child-protection hearings themselves are also closed to the public.
• Wiretap applications and orders, an unserved charge or unexecuted warrant, jury lists, resolution-conference memoranda, pre-trial and case-conference briefs, and anything sealed by court order.
• Certain materials are excluded only until they become evidence at trial: assessment reports, pre-trial exhibit books, discovery-examination transcripts, pre-sentence reports, and victim impact statements.

No Manitoba court-records document was found that specifically addresses a mental-health-record carve-out distinct from the general exclusions above; treat that as an open question rather than a confirmed rule either way. No separate blanket restriction on Family Division files as a whole was found either, beyond the specific adoption, child-protection, and sealed-order exclusions that apply to any court's records.

Criminal, Civil, Family, and Traffic Access at a Glance

Ordering a Transcript

Court transcripts in Manitoba are produced by an outside contractor, Royal Reporting, A Veritext Company, not by the court registry itself. Most proceedings are recorded by court-clerk-operated equipment, and a transcript is produced from that recording on request.

An extra copy on a data-storage device costs $25 per device, on top of the transcript fee. GST applies except when the transcript is ordered by Legal Aid Manitoba or a Manitoba government department.

Court Records Are Not a Criminal Record Check

Searching the Court Registry System for a docket entry, or requesting a Provincial Court file, is a different process from getting a police criminal record check, and Manitoba's own access policy makes that distinction explicit. For background screening tied to employment, that goes through a police service or an accredited screening company, not a court file search. Someone trying to keep an old conviction from surfacing in routine background checks should look at record suspensions (pardons), which is a separate federal process from anything a court registry can provide.

Manitoba's Small Claims process runs through King's Bench; for how to actually file a claim, see small claims court in Manitoba and the general guide to filing a small claim in Canada.

For how neighbouring provinces handle the same questions, see court records in Saskatchewan. For Manitoba's birth, death, and marriage certificates, see vital records in Manitoba. For the full provincial rundown, see the Canada court records hub.

Disclaimer

This article is informational only and is not legal advice. Manitoba's court access policies and fees can change, and this page notes several genuinely unconfirmed points: whether the Court Registry System's online search is free under every circumstance, and whether Manitoba has a distinct mental-health-record carve-out for court files, were not confirmed by any primary source located during research. A publication ban restricts what may be published from a court record, not what may be viewed, and breaching one is an offence. Confirm current requirements, forms, and fees directly with the specific Manitoba court office before relying on this page.