Federal Court of Canada
This site provides information on Federal Court rules, reports and decisions, which you begin to access by clicking the appropriate tab on the top tool bar.  After this, simple, uncluttered bars on the left allow access to the main sections of each component.  For example, clicking the Business tab displays a tool bar listing  Hearing lists, Proceedings,Act, Rules, Forms, Bills, Assessment of Costs, Requests for Interpretation, and Useful links.  An interesting note to Useful Links is its apparent support of 2 commercial publishers.  This is odd for an official government site, but probably explainable by the fact there are also links to Federal Court Practice 2000 published by Carswell and Federal Court of Canada service Butterworths. Likewise the link to decisions is also located on the toolbar at the top, and this module is not only easy to search, but is also very up-to-date.  If only all government funded ventures were this user-friendly.  You can access the site at http://www.fct-cf.gc.ca/

Ontario Courts
This site provides something for everyone with useful information about the Ontario Courts system, in a logical and easy to use format. After the opening screen, the user is given some simple main choices: Court of Appeal, Superior Court of Justice, Ontario Court of Justice. Or you can jump to more specific information by clicking items such as Ontario Court Addresses, Notices and Rule Changes, or Ontario Statutes and Regulations. Best of all though, is the availability of recently released judgments and endorsements for the Ontario Court of Appeal, as well as full-text decisions back to 1998. This is a good place to check for recent decisions which may be hard to find in the usual sources. Also useful are the links to the various rules, such as the Family Court Rules and the forms are downloadable .pdf files. The site now has a link to materials relating to the Ontario Court of Justice. www.ontariocourts.on.ca

Ontario Court Forms
We received an email recently from the Executive Director of LibraryCo. about the changes to the forms under the Rules of Civil Procedure, effective July 1, 2006.  This amendment to Rule 1.06 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, made by O. Reg.77/06, removes the associated forms from the Rules and incorporates them by reference to a new website instead. The forms will no longer be published on the provincial government’s e-laws website. The regulation also includes a new Table of Forms that gives the Form Number, Form Title and Date of Form.

Each form is now available on this public website as a separate document in HTML and/or Microsoft Word. The format of these forms is not in compliance with Rule 4 that governs the format of court documents. It is a party’s responsibility to ensure that any form they file complies with the Rules of Civil Procedure, e.g. Rule 4.01 (formatting).

An added identifier appears at the end of each form and comprises two elements: A form code, e.g., RCP-E 4A, and a version date, e.g. November 1, 2005. At present, the civil forms share a common version date since they were incorporated by reference at the same time. In future, the version date of a form will depend on the date it is either amended, replaced by a new form, or added. No changes were made to the substance of the forms. There are no new or amended forms.  The forms can be accessed at http://www.ontariocourtforms.on.ca.

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