Small Claims. Big Pains.

May 19, 2026

Have you ever tried to file a claim in Ontario’s Small Claims Court?

I have, and I’m here to tell you, it’s not for the faint of heart.

Here’s the story. In 2023, my older sister Nancy wrote a book, Racewalking 101: A Handbook for the Master’s Athlete. Having taken up racewalking in her 50s, Nancy went on to set three Canadian records in her Master’s age group and collected medals in three world championships. When severe back issues forced her to retire as an athlete, Nancy kept going—as a coach, something she’s been doing for 15 years now.

Racewalking 101 may not have made the New York Times list of bestsellers, but I’m confident in saying it’s excellent. Chock full of great advice and insights, expertly edited (by yours truly), beautifully designed (by Kathleen McBride of Cranberryink), and vibrantly illustrated with professional photos (by Jeff Savage).

Nancy had the book printed and arranged for the printer to also sell her books under his “Fulfillment Program.” Unfortunately, Mr. Printer did not fulfill under his so-called program.

He sold the books, yes, but he mostly didn’t pay up. When calls and emails failed to elicit payment from Mr. Printer, Nancy engaged a lawyer to send him a demand letter. Alas, still no response.

So…Nancy decided to take the next logical step, which was to sue the printer in Small Claims Court. I offered to help, thinking, I’m a former lawyer, how hard can this be?

Oh foolish me.

I started, as one does, with a Google search: “Small Claims Court in Ontario.”

Up came “Small Claims Court – Ontario Superior Court of Justice.” I went ahead and clicked and landed on a web page (ontariocourts.ca/scj/areas-of-law/small-claims-court).

At the top of the page were five boxes, including one labelled “Small Claims.” Looking at those top five boxes, I wasn’t immediately certain I was actually on the “Small Claims” page. Only when I clicked the “Small Claims” box and found myself staying on that same page did I think I must be in the right place.

The introductory text told me the Small Claims Court is known as the “People’s Court.” Moreover, the Court supposedly “provides an efficient and cost-effective forum for Ontarians to bring or defend civil claims quicker and at less expense than in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.”

The People’s Court, you say? Efficient and cost-effective, you say? My experience so far—and we’re nowhere done—couldn’t be farther from the truth.

For starters, the introductory text is small and hard to read. It includes four links, the first of which, oddly, is to the Repair and Storage Lien Act. The other links are to the Rules of the Small Claims Court, the Courts of Justice Act, and the Rules of the Small Claims Court Forms.

Possibly overwhelming for one of the People. But, as a former lawyer, I happen to know that you start a claim by filing a Statement of Claim, and since a Statement of Claim is a form, it makes sense, I reckon, to click on the forms link. Especially since the introductory text warns “it is also important to use the correct forms.”

So…I click on the link for Rules of the Small Claims Court Forms. This takes me to a new website (ontariocourtforms.on.ca) where I’m greeted by a dense, text-filled page—also in a small point size.

This page contains 12 links, including to:

the Rules of the Small Claims Court (a piece of legislation, and even lawyers aren’t that fond of reading legislation unless they absolutely have to)
“Other Documents Related to SCC” (this shows a table with four forms, two of which aren’t related to Small Claims at all, but to Youth Justice)
the Rules of the Small Claims Court (again, a piece of legislation which the reader is told to consult “to learn what forms can be filed electronically”)
the Ministry of the Attorney General’s website, Ontario.ca (to learn more about filing online and Small Claims Court proceedings)
the “court’s website” (this takes you back to Small Claims Court landing page on ontariocourts.ca)
Adobe’s website (because you have to have Adobe Acrobat Reader version 5.0 or higher to view the PDF forms)
Microsoft’s website (to install Microsoft Word on your computer in case you don’t have it)

There’s also a link to the website for Community Legal Education Ontario (CLEO), where I’m told I can get help filling out “certain” Small Claims Court forms through something called “Guided Pathways.”

But wait, there’s also a table of forms. Yay! The very thing I’m looking for. Wait again. Forty-six (46) forms? Boo!

To make matters worse, there doesn’t seem to be any logic to the table. The forms are not listed alphabetically, nor do they correspond to the actual steps of making a claim. If that were the case, I’d have expected to see Statement of Claim as Form 1. (The Statement of Claim form is Form 7A.)

Instead, the first form is Form 1A, “Additional Parties”, which is followed by:

1A.1 Additional Debtors
1B Request to Change Attendance Method
1C Objection to Request to Change Attendance Method
4A Consent to Act as Litigation Guardian

There is also a big warning not to use any forms that haven’t yet “come into force”, and the table so very helpfully includes a column with coming-into-force dates. Très compliqué, as the French are fond of saying.

Before clicking on Form7A, Statement of Claim, I begin to have niggling doubts that I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Usually, I like to have a general idea of where I’m going before jumping into a task, so, to get a better handle on this People’s Court, I decide to go back to the Small Claims Court home page and check out the “How To” guides.

Except that it’s not at all obvious how to get back to the Small Claims Court landing page. And in fact, I forget that I’m not actually on the website where I started (ontariocourts.ca) but instead on the “Forms” website (ontariocourtforms.ca).

So, I end up googling Small Claims Court—again—and starting over on the Ontario Courts/Small Claims Court web page.

This time, I pay more attention to the collection of 13 “boxes” half-way down the page. These include: “Guide to the Small Claims Court Process” and “Starting and Responding to a Case.”

I’m tempted to cut to the chase, to jump right to “Starting and Responding to a Case,” but I restrain myself and opt instead to peruse the Guide. I click on the arrow on the Guide box.

This takes me to another screen containing just a single line of text and yet another link, “Guide to procedures in small claims court.” I click on that link, and while I now find myself on a completely different website (ontario.ca), here, finally, I find a guide.

Of sorts. The first heading, “Overview,” is not what I would have expected from an overview, nor is it particularly helpful. It amounts to a warning that this is a guide only. It’s not intended to be a substitute for the Rules of the Small Claims Court “which should be examined for specific information.” Back to that pesky legislation which I didn’t really want to have to wade through…

The second heading, “Where to get more information,” tells me Small Claims Court forms are available at ontariocourtforms.ca. That page again! The text also tells me I can find tips on how to complete the forms “at the end of this guide” (why the end, I’m wondering) and again offers up the “Small Claims Court Guided Pathways.”

I am determined not to let the Small Claims Court get the better of me, so I press on, and click “Next.”

This next page is titled “Making a Claim.” In the “Overview,” I’m told that “the information set out in this guide will attempt [emphasis mine] to assist you if you want to file either a Plaintiff’s Claim Form (Form 7A) or a Defendant’s Claim Form (Form 10A). I think of the famous quote from Yoda: “Do or do not, there is no try.” If only the people who cobbled together this labyrinthine mess had listened to Yoda. Instead, the best they can offer is an “attempt” to help? And good luck to you!

The Overview is flawed in other ways. It doesn’t immediately or clearly tell you what a “plaintiff” or a “claim” is. You find that information—sort of—further down the page. And the headings don’t seem to follow the logical order of making a claim. For example, “Settling a Case” comes before “Plaintiff’s claim.” I don’t think you need to be a lawyer to know that you can’t settle a case before there’s even a case to settle.

And so it goes. On and on, through multiple steps and screens, and, as already mentioned, multiple different websites.

Given that there is nothing—I repeat, NOTHING—simple, logical or straightforward about this process, it’s a minor miracle that I managed to complete a Statement of Claim. I initially tried to file the claim online, and when that didn’t work (that’s a whole other story!), I finally settled on printing three copies and handing them over to my sister to file in person at the court.

As an Ontarian, a former lawyer, and a plain language practitioner, I find this appalling and shameful. (I would use stronger language, but The Clarity Chronicles is a family-friendly newsletter.)

Is this the best we can do in Ontario to serve the “People”?

Besides the glaringly obvious failure to provide access to justice, Ontario’s Small Claims Court process also fails epically when it comes to plain language. (Surprise! The two are inextricably entwined.)

The ISO Standard on Plain Language states that a communication is in plain language if the wording, structure and design are so clear that intended readers can easily [emphasis mine]:

find what they need
understand what they find, and
use that information.

Based on my recent ordeal, it would be far from easy for the average person—one of the “People”—to find the information they needed about Small Claims Court, much less understand what they did manage to find, and then actually use that information to make a claim.

The whole thing needs a complete overhaul (Ontario Courts, I await your call), so for now, I’ll set out a just a few things that would make it better.

1. Start at the very beginning (to quote Do Re Mi)—with the intended audience.

Plain language puts readers first. As the Introduction to the ISO Standard states, plain language considers:

what readers want and need to know
their level of interest, expertise and literacy skills
the context in which they will use the documents or web pages.

When it comes to Ontario’s Small Claims Court, I’m pretty sure the average person does not relish the thought of reading either The Courts of Justice Act or the Rules of the Small Claims Court. They certainly don’t want to read the Repair and Storage Liens Act.

An improvement would be to ensure the landing page satisfies the need of the average reader (read “non-lawyer”) for general information. The page would still reference the governing legislation—it has to—but these references could come later, when they’d be less distracting.

2. Provide a genuine overview.

Most readers welcome and benefit from a general overview and orientation before being thrust into the details.

Any guide to the Small Claims Court should therefore start with the big picture: What exactly is a claim? What is a plaintiff? What is a defendant?

The guide should set out the process in a clear, step-by-step fashion. In my brave quest to draft my sister’s claim, I did eventually stumble on a page on “Ontario.ca” that did this. More or less. It listed “the five key steps” to sue someone in Small Claims Court. I could literally feel my brain’s reward circuit light up when I found this.

Why on earth wasn’t this the first thing that greeted me when I landed on the Small Claims Court page on “Ontariocourts.ca” website? That said, even this 5-step list could be made more reader friendly by adding graphics to create a visually-engaging process map.

3. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

I’ve already described how maddening it was to be bounced around to so many different websites and web pages. For the life of me, I couldn’t keep track of where I was, how I got there, or how to get back to where I started. That this needs fixing is an understatement.

Apart from the process, the language could also be simplified. The web pages should introduce legal concepts in plain language and provide easy-to-understand definitions straight off the bat. For example, the words “serve” and “service” appear several times before they are formally defined. (To “serve” someone with a legal document is to give them a copy of that document. My guess is most people would not think of "serve" in that way; they would likely be thinking about service in a store or a restaurant.)

Even the help promised by CLEO (Community Legal Education Ontario) uses a phrase, “Guided Pathways”, that I find abstract and jargony, and therefore off-putting. How about something more concrete like: “Step-By-Step Guide to Filing a Claim in Small Claims Court.” I know CLEO’s “Guided Pathway” is more than guide—it is a “pathway” that, if followed, does spit out a decent Statement of Claim—but that could be explained in the introduction; it didn’t have to be the actual title.

Finally, the only way to ensure the process is simple and logical is to do user testing. Whoever is tasked with overhauling Ontario’s Small Claims Court process must make sure that intended users of the Court—the actual “People”—can easily file or defend a claim. It’s impossible for me to believe the Courts followed this crucial step in setting things up as they did.

In fairness to cash-strapped governments everywhere, the whole hot mess of websites bears all the hallmarks of repeated add ons. It’s always tempting to make this type of fix, because it seems cheap and easy. But at some point, renovations piled on top of renovations can get out of hand. At some point, somebody needs to yell "Uncle." And at that point, the only solution is to call the whole thing off and start fresh.

As I said…Ontario Courts, I await your call.

Remember this: Plain language should be the fundamental principle guiding governments when offering services to the public. In a democratic society, people should be able to find the information they’re looking for, understand that information, and use it to accomplish what they set out to do—all with ease.

Effective Communication | Plain Language