Key Takeaways
- Canada's adult courts completed 58,790 cases in April–June 2026, up from 56,099 in the same quarter a year earlier.
- The median case took 218 days to complete, down from 223, and 47.3% of adult cases ended in a guilty finding.
- Statistics Canada labels the figures preliminary, and they count cases completed in the quarter — not crimes committed in it.
More Cases, Slightly Faster: What Canada's Court Numbers Actually Say
Canada's criminal courts worked through more cases this spring than a year earlier — and, by one measure, worked a little faster. Statistics Canada's latest court tables show 58,790 adult cases completed in April to June 2026, carrying 236,278 charges. A year earlier, the same quarter closed 56,099 cases and 221,329 charges.
The typical case also moved somewhat quicker. For cases taking more than a week to resolve, the median completion time was 218 days, down from 223 a year earlier. The share of cases blowing past the Jordan ceiling on trial delays eased to 8.9%, from 9.8% — and when cases did exceed it, 46.0% ended up stayed or withdrawn.
Just under half of adult cases — 47.3% — ended in a guilty finding, and 38.0% of those guilty cases drew a custody sentence.
The numbers that need careful reading
Completed homicide cases jumped to 101 from 81, and attempted-murder cases to 38 from 26. Read those carefully: these are cases that received a final decision in the quarter — the offences themselves mostly happened earlier, so this is a court-throughput number, not a crime wave. Sexual assault (1,054), fraud (1,636) and impaired driving (4,762) completions also rose, while robbery completions fell to 558.
Youth courts got busier faster: 4,167 completed cases, up from 3,797, with 42.4% ending in a guilty finding.
Two honesty notes. The data are preliminary — they cover courts that reported within eight weeks of the quarter's end, and Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador superior courts are excluded because they report annually. And the year-over-year increases are calculated from Statistics Canada's published levels; the agency itself does not publish a national change figure for this series and cautions that the mix of reporting courts can shift between periods.
The Twikup Take
A justice system is judged on two things: whether cases conclude, and how long the accused and victims wait. On both, this spring was modestly better than last — more files closed, a slightly shorter wait, fewer cases dying against the delay ceiling. Modest is the right word: 218 days is still seven months of a life on hold.
Image: Illustrative image.