When Will My Disclosure Be Ready? Why Criminal Evidence Takes Months in Toronto
When Will My Disclosure Be Ready? Why Criminal Evidence Takes Months in Toronto
The days after a first criminal charge can feel like a blur. You may be grappling with fear about the future, your job, your family, and the scramble to find a lawyer. But above all, one question tends to consume people: what exactly am I accused of doing?
Most people assume they’ll find out at their first court appearance. They’re wrong. In Toronto today, the core evidence against you — the complainant’s statement, the officers’ notes, the video — is typically not provided until months after your arrest. Five or even six months is now common.
This article explains why that happens, why I believe it’s inconsistent with both your Charter rights and the courts’ own rules, and what a defence lawyer can do about it.
What disclosure is — and why your first appearance won’t answer your questions
“Disclosure” is all of the information in the Crown’s possession that is relevant to your case: witness statements, police notes, body-worn camera footage, photographs, forensic reports, and more. You cannot properly assess or defend a criminal case without it, and your lawyer’s first job is to review it carefully.
The first court appearance, despite what many people expect, is an administrative step. No evidence is heard, no plea is entered — and in Toronto, increasingly often, no meaningful disclosure has been provided by that date either. That is a significant change from past practice, when core disclosure was routinely available by or shortly after the first appearance.
What Jordan changed — and what it didn’t
Section 11(b) of the Charter guarantees your right to be tried within a reasonable time. In R. v. Jordan, 2016 SCC 27, the Supreme Court gave that right teeth, setting presumptive ceilings — generally 18 months for cases in the Ontario Court of Justice and 30 months in the Superior Court. Since then, hundreds of prosecutions have been stayed for unreasonable delay.
The courts responded by dramatically shortening the road to trial. In Toronto right now, trial dates are often available just a few months out. That’s genuine progress.
But in my experience, Crown offices — particularly in Toronto and Brampton — have responded to the faster trial calendar with a more relaxed pace on early-stage disclosure. The logic seems to be: if the trial can be scheduled to finish comfortably under the ceiling, what’s the rush? Whether disclosure arrives in month one or month six, the case can still complete within 14 or 15 months.
The video explanation — and why it doesn’t hold up
The most common justification is volume: there is far more video evidence than there used to be. Police services in Toronto and Peel, among others, now generate in-car camera and body-worn camera footage on most files, and it must be reviewed and vetted before it can be disclosed.
That’s all true. But two things follow from it, and neither supports months of silence:
- The footage takes the same amount of time to review today as it will in five months. Deferring the work doesn’t shrink it. It just transfers the waiting onto the person presumed innocent.
- Volume calls for triage. If resources are stretched, the answer is to prioritize the disclosure that actually drives decisions — above all, the complainant’s statement. In my experience there is no visible effort to get central items out first. Everything waits together.
The more troubling explanation: managing to the ceiling
The more cynical reading is that some Crown offices have internalized Jordan as a deadline rather than a duty — treating the 18-month ceiling as the target instead of an outer boundary. On that mindset, a court offering trial dates four months out is practically an invitation to take your time at the front end of the prosecution.
That is not what section 11(b) says. The right is to be tried within a reasonable time — not merely within 18 months. And Jordan itself preserves stays below the ceiling where the defence has moved diligently and the case has taken markedly longer than it reasonably should have. The ceiling was meant to be a backstop, not a budget.
The courts’ own rules expect better
The Ontario Court of Justice has said so expressly. Under the Court’s practice direction on Jordan-compliant trial scheduling, the parties are expected to be ready to resolve the case or set a trial date within six months of the charge being sworn — and if substantial disclosure hasn’t been received within four months, a judicial pre-trial must be scheduled to address it.
For six-month trial-readiness to be realistic, disclosure needs to be substantially complete by about the three-month mark, so that counsel can review it, meet with their client, and conduct a meaningful Crown pre-trial. In my experience, that standard is almost never met in Toronto.
The result is a quiet unfairness: courts, working to keep cases moving, sometimes press accused people and their lawyers to make decisions about plea and election without full disclosure — or without adequate time to digest it. Think about that sequence. The state can sit on a recorded video statement for four, five, six months — and the defence is then expected to review it, understand it, and give informed instructions within a couple of weeks.
Why early disclosure matters so much to your defence
Delayed disclosure isn’t just an indignity. It damages defences in concrete ways:
- Evidence disappears. Exculpatory material — texts, emails, social media posts, and especially third-party surveillance footage — may need to be identified and preserved quickly. Many surveillance systems overwrite themselves within weeks.
- Memories fade. You can’t meaningfully reconstruct your movements and interactions from six months ago if you’re only now learning which day matters and why.
- The asymmetry is corrosive. The state holds the detailed allegations, sometimes for half a year, while the person whose life has been upended — who may be under restrictive bail conditions the entire time — is desperate to know what they’re facing.
One more thing: the police synopsis you or your lawyer may receive early on is not a substitute for the real thing. Synopses routinely omit important details, and they can be misleading. There is no substitute for the actual recorded statement.
If you are representing yourself: request your disclosure in writing
A practical note for people facing charges in Toronto without a lawyer. Disclosure will not always find its way to you on its own — you are entitled to request it, and you should do so directly. In Toronto, self-represented accused can request their disclosure from the Crown’s office by email at torontocrownattorneysoffice@ontario.ca. Include your full name, your date of birth, your next court date and courtroom, and the charges you are facing.
And do not stop at one email. If disclosure has not arrived, follow up in writing — politely, and more than once. Every request you send creates a record. If your case later approaches the Jordan ceiling, that paper trail becomes evidence that the delay was not yours: you asked for the evidence against you, repeatedly, and it was not produced. On a section 11(b) application, a documented history of diligence can matter a great deal.
What we do about it
At Gray Defence we treat section 11(b) as a right to be enforced, not a formality — and we have a track record of defending it both above and below the Jordan ceiling. That work starts long before any application is filed: pressing for disclosure early and on the record, insisting that central items be prioritized, using judicial pre-trials the way the practice direction intends, and building the paper trail that makes delay attributable to the Crown when it matters.
If you’ve been charged and are still waiting to learn the case against you, contact my office or call 416.826.8610 for a confidential consultation. You can also find answers to common questions about the criminal process on our FAQ page.
This article reflects practice in the Toronto area as of mid-2026 and is for educational purposes only. It is not legal advice. Every case turns on its own facts — if you need legal advice, speak with a lawyer.
