Why won't Ontario track the reasons why criminal charges are dropped or stayed?

Five years ago Ontario's auditor general recommended the province start tracking the reasons criminal charges are withdrawn by prosecutors or stayed by judges — to help reduce costs and ensure cases make it through the system efficiently amid backlogs.

But despite facing bigger backlogs from the pandemic and a rising number of stayed and withdrawn charges, Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General has refused to track those reasons. 

The recommendations stem from a 2019 audit of the province's criminal court system, and were reiterated by Auditor General Shelley Spence this summer. 

"If you don't know, you can't manage," Spence told the province's standing committee on justice policy in August.

"We still encourage [the ministry] to capture the data in whatever way makes sense… so that they can actually do something with that analysis to fix the issue and speed up the cases. But what we're seeing is that it's not getting better."

Recent data on criminal charge outcomes in Ontario shows most cases have ended with charges being withdrawn, stayed, dismissed or discharged before a decision at trial since 2020. In 2022-23, the latest fiscal year for which data is available, 56 per cent ended that way — a 14 per cent increase since 2013-14 when guilty decisions still made up most outcomes.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the auditor general said the recommendations were intended to help speed up the progress of cases through the system and reduce the costs caused by delays when charges are withdrawn because there is no reasonable prospect of conviction.  

As for stayed cases, the reasons for those would help the ministry understand whether delays were due to prosecutor availability, disclosure of evidence, court scheduling or defence counsel. 

Last year the ministry told a provincial committee that the effort and cost associated with reviewing judge's written decisions, transcripts or audio recordings of proceedings to determine all the reasons for a stay of charges as recommended "would not provide value for money."

In terms of the reasons for withdrawing charges, the ministry told the auditor general that tracking them wouldn't benefit the administration of justice and would "risk impacting the judgment of prosecutors."

CBC Toronto asked the ministry how it intends to understand what parties and factors are having the greatest impact on criminal charges being withdrawn by prosecutors and stayed by judges if it does not have aggregate data on those decisions. 

In a statement, a spokesperson said the ministry's internal tracking system allows prosecutors to record the specific reason for a stay and the reasons for withdrawals at the individual case level, which can then be reviewed by Crown managers. 

But the larger-scale tracking recommended by the auditor general "would risk impacting the ability of prosecutors to assess each and every case individually on its merits," said spokesperson Alexandra Wilkes. 

"To address the intent of the auditor's recommendation, the ministry continues to implement and explore initiatives that will reduce the number of cases that would likely result in a withdrawal and reduce the average number of days before a charge is withdrawn."