Chief justice who pushed to modernize Ontario court system retiring in May
Geoffrey Morawetz spent roughly 7 years as chief justice and 21 years as a judge
Geoffrey Morawetz, the chief justice of the Ontario Superior Court who led the charge to modernize the province's justice system, is set to retire this spring.
A statement on the court's website says Morawetz plans to retire on May 15, after roughly seven years as chief justice and 21 years as a judge.
Morawetz was appointed as chief justice in 2019 and set his sights on replacing the court's outdated, paper-based system with a more efficient digital one.
His vision took on more urgency as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down all in-person court operations for months, forcing hearings to move online and documents to be filed electronically.
In a 2021 speech, Morawetz said that while his initial goal was to bring the courts into the 20th century, the pandemic "pushed us rather quickly into the 21st century instead."
More recently, the province rolled out the first phase of a new online portal that aims to allow people in Toronto to file documents, look up virtual links and pay fees in civil and family matters. The portal is set to expand to criminal cases next year and gradually roll out to the rest of the province by 2030.
Morawetz first asked Attorney General Doug Downey to procure an off-the-shelf digital end-to-end platform in 2020, he said in his opening of the courts address last fall.
"It is hard for me to believe that we are around the corner from this transformation," he said weeks before the portal launched.
"Ontario is now one of the largest jurisdictions to pursue digitizing an entire justice system. It will fundamentally transform the way that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Ontario court of justice, staff, the bar and litigants operate."
Morawetz's tenure set in motion another major transformation — reforms to the civil rules of procedure, an effort to make Ontario's civil court more efficient and accessible.
A review was launched in 2024 in collaboration with Downey, and the committee submitted its final recommendations in December of last year.
Morawetz, a veteran civil and commercial judge, recently presided over the lengthy insolvency proceedings of three tobacco giants, a case that resulted in a historic settlement that will see the companies pay out $32.5 billion to their creditors, including smokers across Canada.
