In a ruling just released and updated on our front page The Premier of Ontario has ruled us an “Essential Business”.

This means in The Province of Ontario we will remain open to serve your needs. With our head office located in Hamilton, we will remain open.

Field offices across the Country may be different as different Provinces are handling this in their way, but likely they will all be ruled as essential.

What this does not mean, is that it will be business as usual.

There are changes happening almost hourly across the Country that effects us, and more will happen.

There are no guarantees,  what we may say we can do could change by tomorrow.

Everyone needs to understand the seriousness of the virus and be extremely flexible in what you may ask of us.

If you have a service need in an office of ours please contact them directly by email.

Our head office is now down to 1 person in the building at a time, we are working shifts, and are processing your files in a timely manner.

Delays in the delivery system by post and courier are expected and are happening.

If you need to call our head office and get a busy signal, you can email us instead, our email is being handled off-site by a separate staff member.

Stay Safe and Stay Home!

The closures of the courts and certain functions are being announced daily if not hourly. I have just read the announcement from the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario and it looks like counter operations will remain open but power is being given to each jurisdiction to close or remain open. Across Canada each province is handling this differently and it is impossible for us to list all of them for you. So with that in mind if you have an urgent matter that needs to be addressed in one of the courts you will have to call that court in question to see if your matter qualifies to be issued/filed.

As this will change by the hour or day we obviously will not be able to provide you with absolute certainty on each court.

As each day goes by these rules will change and we will post up what becomes available.

Please note that we make no guarantee one way or the other on the courts availability again, this is your responsibility to find this out yourself, by calling the court in question.

Stay safe everyone.

 

March 19, 2020, The Federal Court in Toronto is closed for 30 days.

Every day our offices have hundreds of packages delivered to us, and most have them have to be signed for in person. In order to keep us all safe and under the suggestion of the medical professionals to reduce contact, here are some suggestions for you to think about and hopefully implement immediately. I have checked the websites of the major couriers and do not see anything mentioned about this at the time of writing this. Each courier company usually has an electronic signature board that is used to have a signature applied via an attached electronic pen. This board can be handed to hundreds of people a day. In order to stop the potential spread of Covid-19 I am asking all courier companies and post to implement new procedures that will keep us all safe.

For example instead of handing the board to the party accepting the delivery, simply ask them there name, and the delivery driver can sign and enter that persons name themselves.

As well, consider that if the company/residence has a notice on there door that they will not be accepting visitors, etc, consider implementing a “No signature required” protocol immediately. We have even helped the couriers by putting a name on the door for couriers to enter themselves on the pad, and then leave between the door or in our mailbox.

WE are all in this together to help stopping the spread of this virus.

Stay safe everyone.

Things are changing by the hour and it looks like later tonight another announcement will be coming about the closure of the Ontario Courts on Tuesday. I was just about to write this post with some suggestions to keep us all safe in the courts as we are there every day at times up to 8 hours at the counters issuing, filing and doing research. Depending on what happens across Canada and as every court is different if the counters do stay open it would be prudent to implement immediately some safe protocols to keep everyone safe and at a distance from each other. Some courts have tiny offices that we attend and people are at times crammed inside all together. My suggestion is that if this is the case for your courthouse that you assign waiting areas in the hallway, etc, anything that would keep people safely away at the 3-6 foot suggestion. Assigning a chit system like we have unofficially done in the past would also help. We are going to strongly suggest to all law firms that if the court in question can issue documents online to do that instead of us attending. Removing pens at the counter is another small tip, each of us should be empowered to come up with ways to keep us all safe. If the counters close to us on Tuesday as well, please do not call Monday for an emergency issuing or filing if you have a limitation date coming up. The courts will obviously grant an extension.

Our Port Rowan office will be relocating to Tillsonburg in a few weeks. This new office location will be better able to serve you in Oxford County. We look forward to serving you out of this new location, in order to locate the closest process serving office to your needs always use the search by city or postal code that is located on our main page.