By Tom Parkin
October 7th, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
Millions in lost fine revenue. Millions spent to process and prepare cases that never get decided — because of a backlogged court system. Guess who pays!
Total number of withdrawals has doubled
Number of Ontario Highway Traffic Act charges withdrawn total, at trial and pre-trial, 2015-2025
Likely thousands of drivers charged with the most serious traffic safety violations are getting away without paying any fine only because backlogs are forcing courts to dropp charges, an analysis of Ontario Court data suggests.
Key data showing the cost of Doug Ford’s court backlog was today revealed at a press conference by NDP MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam
And when you dig deeper into the traffic safety court data, it gets worse and worse.
Dropped road safety charges have doubled in 10 years
More than 338,000 road safety charges were withdrawn from Ontario’s courts between March 2024 and April 2025 (see chart, above). That number has doubled from the 163,000 charges dropped in 2015.
The number dropped at trial but without trial — that is, by court motion before the trial actually starts — has dropped slightly from 100,000 in 2015 to 85,000 between April 2024 and March 2025.
But charges withdrawn before trial has quadrupled from 63,000 in 2015 to 254,000 in the most recently reported period. Who exactly is dropping these charges and their legal reasons are open questions.
The massive number of dropped charges likely represents tens of millions of dollars in lost fine revenue other Ontarians will now pay in taxes, cuts or deficits.
Ontarians will pay and pay and pay for clogged courts
But Ontarians don’t just pay the fines of those who dodged accountability. They’ll pay twice.
They’ll pay for police officers writing up 338,000 charges that went nowhere. And court staff who scheduled trials and administered the charges, just to delete all their work. And for the crown prosecutors, justices of the peace and judges who called trials to order on 84,549 charges in 2024/25, only to let accused go before any evidence was ever heard in court.
Most serious charges among most likely to be dropped
From April 2024 to March 2025, the most serious traffic violations were the ones most frequently withdrawn.
42% of 12,920 stunt driving charges withdrawn
33% of 28,438 charges for driving under suspension, and
31% of 28,588 careless driving charges.
Only 6.4 per cent of speeding charges were withdrawn, the least likely of the categories tracked by Ontario Courts data.
Most serious violations among those most dropped
Percentage of various HTA charges dropped, Apr 2024-Mar 2025
Court backlog growing again
The Supreme Court has set time delay limits on lower courts, known as Jordan limits. While the Ontario Court data doesn’t show time from charge to trial, it does show year-end court backlogs are growing again.
In Ontario, some of the serious criminal charges, including murder, have exceed Jordan limits and been tossed. More about that in a future Data Shows.
The number of Highway Traffic Act charges in the court system at year end fell from from almost 250,000 in 2017 to under 100,000 in 2020. But despite the massive purge of charges in 2022, the number is rising again, now nearly doubling to 187,000 and maintaining the pressure to keep dropping serious traffic safety charges because of overwhelmed courts
Backlogs are growing again
Number of HTA charges pending disposition at end of period
Leave a Reply