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| Sherif Rizk |
The court found that Luloff operated a vehicle while nearly twice the legal blood alcohol limit. His defence alleged multiple Charter breaches, but the court ultimately admitted the evidence and imposed a fine of more than $3,500 along with a one-year driving prohibition.
The decision will remain part of Luloff’s legacy as councillor for the Orléans East–Cumberland ward. Local and national media closely followed the proceedings, even publishing video evidence presented at trial.
Yet the path this case took to reach a courtroom may be as significant as the verdict itself.
Luloff’s original trial dates were scheduled for October 2024 but were adjourned because no courtroom was available. At Ottawa’s Elgin Street courthouse, it is common for multiple matters to be scheduled into a single courtroom — a practice known as “stacking,” which reflects the chronic shortage of judges and available courtrooms.
When Luloff and his lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, arrived for the October dates, their matter was not heard. They returned on several occasions before courtroom space finally opened.
That delay prompted Luloff’s counsel to bring a delay application in December 2025 under s. 11(b) of the Charter, arguing that the charges should be stayed for unreasonable delay. The court dismissed the motion, finding that some delay was attributable to the defence and that the overall timeline remained below the 18-month presumptive ceiling established by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Jordan, 2016 SCC 27.
Despite the application, the trial proceeded
But the Jordan framework itself is the real story. Under that decision, institutional delay (including a lack of courtrooms or judges) counts against the Crown. The state cannot rely on overcrowded dockets as an excuse. The Supreme Court deliberately created a rule with consequences: if criminal matters are not heard within presumptive timelines, the charges may be stayed entirely.
While civil cases do not engage the same liberty interests as criminal prosecutions, the underlying lesson of Jordan is broader: delay becomes tolerable only when institutions lack incentives to manage time proactively.
As a civil litigator practising in Coun. Luloff’s ward, I followed this case not only as a matter of local public interest, but with a growing unease about what accommodating it likely displaced.
The lack of urgency in the civil system
This was not merely a criminal trial involving an elected official unfolding in public view. It was also a very visible example of how courts must constantly allocate scarce judicial resources.
Every day, criminal matters carry constitutional priority under the Jordan framework, effectively competing with civil cases for a limited pool of judges and courtrooms. When time is short, criminal matters understandably move to the front of the line.
The cost of this prioritization is often invisible.
The people who bear it are not parties in high-profile cases with experienced counsel and media attention. Instead, they are litigants in commercial disputes, personal injury claims or contract cases whose matters can take years to receive meaningful judicial attention.
In the past year alone, I have worked on several civil cases where we arrived at court prepared to proceed, only to be told that no judge was available to hear the matter. When those delays occur, litigants rarely know what displaced them. But cases like Luloff’s illustrate how courts must constantly balance competing demands for limited time.
Access to justice is not about whether the courthouse door is open. It is about whether your matter is heard within a reasonable timeframe once you walk through it.
Lessons from the Jordan framework
There is also a lesson in how the Luloff proceedings were ultimately managed.
When the Jordan application was brought in December 2025, the court addressed it directly and moved the matter forward rather than allowing delay to accumulate. In other words, the court treated time as a resource that required active management.
One must wonder how earlier proactive intervention might have delivered justice more efficiently in this case, and whether a similar approach could be applied in civil litigation.
The Jordan framework demonstrates that when courts impose clear expectations around delay, institutions adapt. Lawyers prepare differently, prosecutors prioritize files and courts manage dockets with greater discipline.
Civil litigation, by contrast, rarely operates under comparable pressure.
Procedural reform alone will not solve the problem
Ontario is currently finalizing Phase 3 amendments to the Rules of Civil Procedure through the Civil Rules Review, a working group launched in 2024 by the Attorney General and Chief Justice Geoffrey Morawetz of the Superior Court of Justice. These reforms seek to streamline procedures and make litigation more efficient. Those goals are laudable. But procedural reform alone cannot resolve the deeper structural problem: civil litigants still compete with criminal matters for a finite supply of judicial time.
Without addressing how that time is allocated, improvements to procedural efficiency may simply shift the problem rather than solve it.
The role of plaintiff-side advocacy
Organizations like the Ontario Trial Lawyers Association (OTLA) are uniquely positioned to shape this conversation.
OTLA’s recent response to the Civil Rules Review raised legitimate concerns about the direction of proposed reforms. But if civil justice is to evolve, plaintiff-side institutions must move beyond reactive commentary toward proactive litigation strategies capable of shaping precedent.
The Supreme Court of Canada has recently signalled interest in hearing more private law cases. That opening creates an opportunity for plaintiff-side organizations to strategically advance cases that expose structural inequities in civil procedure before the landscape becomes entrenched for another generation.
If the Jordan decision reshaped criminal justice through strategic litigation, there is no reason civil justice cannot evolve through similar efforts.
If we want to see better access to justice, we must apply one principle across the board: we make time for what we say matters. If the system truly believes civil justice matters, it must allocate judicial resources accordingly.
A final word on being proactive with time
A few years ago, I had a contract dispute case heading to trial. Every pretrial step had been completed and the trial was scheduled for Monday morning. On the Friday afternoon beforehand, a judge asked whether it was truly necessary to proceed to trial. A quick pretrial conference was scheduled, and by 6 p.m. that evening the matter had settled, freeing the courtroom for other cases.
No rule required the judge to intervene that afternoon. It was simply proactive time management.
In my experience, judges and sole practitioners have more in common than the bench might suggest. Both manage heavy cognitive workloads with limited support staff and constant pressure on their time.
Whatever amendments ultimately emerge from Ontario’s Civil Rules Review should be evaluated by a simple question: do they make it easier or harder for judges to allocate their most limited resource — time — in ways that deliver justice efficiently?
The Luloff decision may ultimately become a footnote in Ottawa municipal politics. But the docket that produced it offers a clear picture of what Ontario’s justice system faces every morning.
Procedural reforms cannot create more time in court. Judicial time will always remain finite. The real question is how we choose to allocate it — and whether the rules governing that allocation reflect the priorities we claim our justice system holds.
Sherif Rizk is an Ottawa civil litigation lawyer and certified fraud examiner. His practice focuses on complex disputes, civil procedure and access to justice. He writes on law, governance and public policy affecting courts and institutions across Canada.
The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, LexisNexis Canada, Law360 Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
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