Canada has a complex system of courts that seek to serve Canadians in view of the traditional objectives of civil justice – principally accessibility, efficiency, fairness, efficacy, proportionality and equality. The Canadian court system is generally considered by its users to work well and to have legitimacy. Yet, researchers have found that ‘there is a tendency for people involved in a civil case to become disillusioned about the ability of the system to effect a fair and timely resolution to a civil justice problem’. This article will discuss the ways in which reforms of procedural law and civil justice have originated and continue to be made throughout Canada, both nationally and provincially, as well as the trends and influences in making these reforms. With hundreds of contemporary procedural reforms having been discussed, proposed and/or completed since the first days of Canadian colonisation on a national basis and in the Canadian provinces and territory, providing a detailed analysis will prove challenging. This article will nonetheless provide a review of civil justice and procedural reform issues in Canada, focusing principally, at the provincial level, on the systems of Ontario and Quebec. Importantly, I will seek to reconcile the increasing willingness to have an economically efficient civil justice and the increased power of judges in managing cases, with our court system’s invasion of ADR and its prioritisation of informal modes of adjudication.

This article serves to gain insight in the use and non-use of various types of legal advice, particularly in relation to income levels and legal costs. Based on (logistic regression) analyses involving survey data on 1,928 Dutch citizens who experienced a non-trivial problem in the period May 2009 to May 2014, main findings are as follows: (1) 37% of citizens facing a (potential) legal problem contacted various types of legal advisers once or repeatedly. (2) In the explanation of use/non-use of advocates, problem characteristics turned out to matter significantly, in contrast with the level of household income. Entitlements to subsidized legal aid (lower income groups) as well as legal expenses insurance have made income a factor of less importance. (3) Looking at the degree in which citizens reported (high) costs being a reason for not using legal advice, again no significant differences were found between income groups. Especially advocates were deemed too expensive, regardless of household income; a reason for non-use in half of the cases in which advocates had been considered.