Court Records in Ontario

Ontario runs two separate online court-case search systems split by geography and case type, not one: the Ontario Courts Public Portal covers Toronto-region civil, family, small claims, and enforcement cases, while Justice Services Online covers the rest of the province plus Toronto's own criminal cases, and neither tool is a historical archive.

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

Ontario's Court System

Ontario's courts split into three levels. The Court of Appeal for Ontario hears appeals from the Superior Court of Justice and sits at the top of the provincial court structure; the Chief Justice of Ontario, the Associate Chief Justice, and roughly 30 other judges sit on it, almost always in panels of three and occasionally five. The Superior Court of Justice sits across more than 50 locations province-wide and includes three specialized branches: Divisional Court, which hears statutory appeals from administrative tribunals and is the main venue for judicial review of government decisions; Small Claims Court; and Family Court, which operates at a subset of those locations. The Ontario Court of Justice is a provincial (not federally appointed) court that handles the large majority of criminal charges laid in Ontario, along with search warrants, bail hearings, and peace bonds.

Two Different Online Search Systems, Not One

This is the fact most summaries of Ontario court records flatten, and it matters because using the wrong tool for a case's location or type returns nothing. Ontario changed its online access landscape as of October 14, 2025, and the system is still mid-transition: two overlapping tools currently coexist, split by geography first and case type second.

Ontario Courts Public Portal (courts.ontario.ca/portal/home) currently works in the Toronto region only. It covers Superior Court of Justice and Ontario Court of Justice proceedings there across civil, Divisional Court, Small Claims, Enforcement, and Family case types, searchable by case type, court location, case number, or party name. Outside Toronto, the Portal is not available at all and a search falls back to the second tool. The Portal is run out of CourtsPortal@ontario.ca or 647-438-0403 (toll-free 1-800-980-4962), and the government page does not list a fee for the search itself, as distinct from the document-copy fees covered below.

Justice Services Online, reached through the "Search for court cases online" umbrella tool and gated behind a My Ontario Account (ONe-key) sign-in, covers the rest of the province, plus one Toronto carve-out: Toronto's own criminal cases stayed on Justice Services Online even after Toronto's civil and family cases moved to the Portal. Outside Toronto, Justice Services Online is the only online option for every case type. Results show the case title, file numbers, location, hearing dates, and whether a publication ban is flagged; civil cases additionally show the legal representative's name, the claim amount, and the case opening date, and criminal cases additionally show the legal representative's name and the Information swearing date. The tool "will let you know if a court case is subject to a publication ban," but it "may not reflect a publication ban that was recently granted," so a flag's absence is not proof one does not exist. Cases already restricted "due to laws or court orders" are excluded from the results entirely, and the tool carries an explicit reuse restriction: "You can only use this tool to search for court case information. You can't use this tool's information in any other way, including saving, copying or sharing it."

A third, simpler tool, Daily Court Lists (ontariocourtdates.ca), lists upcoming criminal and family proceedings by case name, time, room number, and reason for appearance, with less case-history depth than the two search tools above (whether it requires an account was not confirmed).

The Online Criminal Search Is a Rolling Window, Not an Archive

The Ontario Court of Justice's adult criminal case search only returns a case if it has a future court date, a court date within the past 7 days, or a bench warrant issued within the past 5 years. Anything older simply will not appear, so the tool is built for tracking an active or very recent matter, not for researching case history. It also excludes, by the court's own listing: Youth Criminal Justice Act matters; Provincial Offences Act matters (those are municipally prosecuted in most of Ontario and go through the municipal court office instead); matters filed in writing, such as Form 14Bs in family law; matters added to a docket after that day's list was posted; and any case a court has ordered restricted.

Case Center Is a Litigant Tool, Not a Public Search

Case Center, the current name for the CaseLines platform, is a cloud-based document-sharing and e-hearing system built by Thomson Reuters. It is mandatory in the Superior Court of Justice for counsel to upload filed documents so the judiciary can review them electronically ahead of a hearing, generally at least 5 days beforehand or per a tighter filing deadline where one applies. As of late November 2025, sign-in runs through the province's Ontario.ca Login service. None of this makes Case Center a records-search tool: it is scoped to parties and counsel on an already-scheduled proceeding, there is no public lookup function, and it is an entirely separate system from both the Portal and Justice Services Online. Anyone searching for a case, rather than working one, wants the tools described above instead.

Tribunals Are a Separate System From the Courts

Tribunals Ontario, which runs the Landlord and Tenant Board, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, the Social Benefits Tribunal, and other adjudicative bodies, is administratively distinct from the ontariocourts.ca court system and keeps its own "Access to Records" policy. Most tribunal decisions and orders are published free on CanLII and, in some cases, on the individual tribunal's own site. A party to an active tribunal matter contacts that tribunal's Registrar's Office directly; anyone else requests records through the Access to Records and Information Office. Restrictions can apply by statute, common law, or a tribunal or court order, fees may be charged to search for or copy records, and a fee-waiver exists for financial hardship. Mediation and settlement-discussion records at a tribunal are confidential and are not part of the case file. If the search above turned up nothing, and the matter involved a landlord-tenant dispute, a human rights complaint, or a benefits appeal rather than a court proceeding, this is the system to check instead.

Requesting Files and Copies at the Courthouse

Beyond the online tools, anyone can ask a courthouse directly to inspect or copy a file. Fees are set by regulation and differ by court:

Retrieving a file from storage costs $83.00 per file at the Superior Court of Justice and Small Claims Court. Copy fees are separate from inspection fees:

Endorsement copies are free to the parties and their lawyers through court staff, and a fee waiver is available on a showing of financial hardship. These figures come from the Ministry of the Attorney General's own current fee page, which cites the underlying regulations by number even though the regulation text itself was not separately pulled from a consolidation for this page; treat the ministry's live figures as the current authority and the regulation numbers as the trail to follow for the legal text itself.

Family Court Records, Youth Matters, and Sealing

Ontario's default rule for family court is openness: "Members of the public are entitled to see any current list maintained by the court of family cases started, any documents filed in a family case, or any orders signed," unless a statute, common law rule, or court order restricts access. That default has real exceptions, and they run in different directions.

A file involving child decision-making responsibility, parenting time, contact, or international child abduction is not sealed, but it is not walk-up-and-read either. Family Law Rule 1.3 requires a member of the public to give written notice before accessing that kind of file, and once notice is given, the other side has 10 calendar days to bring a motion asking the court to restrict access before the file is shown.

Two categories close automatically, with no notice period and no case-by-case discretion involved, under the Child, Youth and Family Services Act, 2017. Child protection hearings and appeals of child protection decisions are closed to the public outright, and court staff cannot provide access to those documents at all. Adoption files are similarly sealed by statute, accessible only to the court, court employees, the parties, their lawyers or agents, and the relevant Director or children's aid society. Secure-treatment hearings are closed to both the public and the media.

Beyond the family-specific rules, a party in any Ontario court proceeding can ask a judge for a sealing order under the Courts of Justice Act on a finding that sealing is necessary to prevent a serious risk to the administration of justice. Even then, the Ministry's own guidance is that the sealing order itself remains accessible unless a judge has separately ordered otherwise, so a sealing order's existence is not automatically hidden just because the record it protects is.

Youth matters get their own exclusion running through nearly every access channel on this page: Youth Criminal Justice Act cases are excluded from the Ontario Court of Justice's online criminal search, and, as described below, from access to the underlying audio recording of a proceeding as well.

Publication bans layer on top of all of the above. The online search tools flag a case when a ban is on file, but they may not show one granted recently, and neither finding a record nor a missing ban flag makes something safe to publish. Breaching a publication ban is an offence regardless of how the underlying information was found, and confirming a ban's status directly with the courthouse before publishing or repeating anything from a case file is the only reliable check.

Ordering a Transcript

Ontario does not produce transcripts through the court itself. Transcripts are prepared by independent Authorized Court Transcriptionists, and a requester works directly with one, chosen off the "Authorized Court Transcriptionists for Ontario" listing site (courttranscriptontario.ca, 1-800-645-8113), to arrange timelines, any deposit, payment, and delivery. Transcript fees are regulated under Ontario Regulation 94/14, but the province's own ordering page does not publish a flat per-page rate table; it defers to the individual transcriptionist to quote against the regulation. Transcripts commonly serve as the written evidentiary record for an appeal or feed legal publications and case-law reporting.

Accessing the Underlying Audio Recording Is a Separate Process

Ordering a transcript and obtaining the raw audio recording of a proceeding are two different requests with two different rules. A self-represented party, a member of the media, an agent, or a member of the public generally needs a court order plus a request form and undertaking to get the audio itself. Licensed counsel and media outlets on the Joint Courts' List need only the form, an undertaking, and the applicable fee, without a separate court order. Authorized Court Transcriptionists get free access to the recording once they sign an "Undertaking of Authorized Court Transcriptionist for Access to Audio Court Recordings," which is the credential that lets them turn a recording into a transcript in the first place. No one gets access, absent a judge overriding it, to recordings of in camera proceedings, Youth Criminal Justice Act proceedings, statutorily or court-closed proceedings, or case, settlement, and trial management conferences.

Court Records Are Not the Same as a Criminal Record Check

Searching a court file tells you what happened in a specific case; it is not the same product as a police-issued criminal record check, and it should not be used as a substitute for one, including in a tenant- or employment-screening context that Ontario's own tools are not built for. Someone who actually needs a criminal record check, background check, or information on getting a criminal record dealt with should use criminal record checks in Canada, background checks and employment in Canada, or record suspensions (pardons) in Canada instead of trying to piece one together from court search tools built for tracking a case, not screening a person.

For Ontario-specific next steps, someone filing or defending a small claim can start at Ontario Small Claims Court and, once a judgment is in hand, at serving and collecting a judgment in Canada. Someone who needs a vital record rather than a court file (a birth, death, or marriage certificate) wants vital records in Ontario, and someone navigating a family case can see divorce in Ontario for the separate divorce-filing process. Quebec's system works very differently, built around a free in-person plumitif rather than an online portal; see court records in Quebec for that comparison. For the national picture of how every province and territory handles court-records access, see the Canada court records hub.

Disclaimer

This page is for general information only and is not legal advice. Ontario's online search tools, courthouse fees, and access policies change, and this page reflects information verified as of 2026-08-15, including a still-transitioning split between the Ontario Courts Public Portal and Justice Services Online, and a Case Center description drawn from the court's own guidance pages rather than a single directly re-opened source page. Confirm current details, especially fees and which online tool applies to a specific location and case type, directly with the relevant court registry before relying on them. A publication ban applies whether or not it appears flagged online, and finding or copying a court record never makes it lawful to publish information the ban restricts.