The Court System

- Organizational chart of the court system
- The Quebec Judicial System
- Courts of First Instance
- Appeal Courts
- Important Dates in the History of the Quebec Judicial System

The Quebec Judicial System

The Quebec judicial system can seem pretty complicated if you aren't familiar with it.

Why is there a Superior Court if there isn’t an Inferior Court? How small does a "small claim" have to be to be heard in Small Claims Court? Why don’t people go directly to the Supreme Court, since that’s where all the important cases end up anyways?

To help you make sense of it all, Éducaloi has created this quick introduction to the Quebec judicial system. You can learn even more by visiting other sections of our website where the courts are explained in more detail.

Courts of First Instance

Courts of first instance are the “front-line” courts: they are the first to hear a case, so they have to deal with the complexity of evidence and witnesses.

In Quebec, these courts include the municipal courts, the Court of Québec, the Superior Court, the Federal Court and the Human Rights Tribunal.

Municipal Courts

Municipal courts deal with two kinds of cases: civil cases in which municipalities try to recover money owed by residents for taxes or permits, and penal cases, in which they fine residents guilty of breaking municipal by-laws.

In some cities, like Quebec City and Montreal, municipal judges can also hear criminal cases dealing with summary conviction offences, such as loitering.

The Court of Québec

The Court of Québec includes three divisions: the Civil Division (which in turn includes the Small Claims Division), the Criminal and Penal Division, and the Youth Division. The Civil Division hears cases that involve amounts of money between $7,001 and $70,000. The Court of Québec also acts as an appeal court for judgments given by some administrative tribunals, such as the Régie du logement.

Cases involving $7,000 and less go to the Small Claims Division. The best-known fact about this court is that the parties cannot be represented by a lawyer.

The Criminal and Penal Division of the Court of Québec hears criminal cases dealing with summary conviction offences, as well as cases in which the accused chooses to be tried before a judge alone instead of a judge and jury. It also deals with proceedings under penal laws other than the Criminal Code. The Youth Division hears cases of adoption and youth protection, and criminal cases in which the accused was a minor when the offence took place.



The Superior Court

The Superior Court decides cases involving more than $70 000. It is also the only court able to decide injunctions, class actions and anything that the Code of Civil Procedure classifies as an “extraordinary recourse”: habeas corpus, prohibition and everything else. It hears all cases of divorce and bankruptcy, and all cases that are hard to classify because the law hasn’t assigned them to another court.

The Superior Court also has jurisdiction to hear criminal and penal cases. Jury trials are held there, and so are trials for serious crimes (like murder, attempted murder, high treason or the unusual crime of “alarming Her Majesty”!).

Finally, the Superior Court acts as an appeal court for decisions made in cases of summary conviction offences. Only this court can hear a recourse in evocation (also called judicial review, certiorari or revision), in which the court can strike down a decision of a tribunal, public institution or professional corporation that has exceeded its authority.

The Federal Court

The Federal Court, as the name implies, hears cases that deal with matters that are the responsibiliti of the federal government under the Canadian Constitution. It hears appeals from decisions of certain federal government organizations and decides disputes between the provinces, or between provinces and the federal government. It can also hear claims from an individual or business against the government of Canada (or vice-versa!) and deals with some specific subjects, like immigration, copyright, patents, taxes and admiralty.

So, if you know an admiral who’s in trouble, talk to the Federal Court.

The Human Rights Tribunal

The Human Rights Tribunal hears cases dealing with discrimination, harassment or exploitation under the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. The Tribunal has its own judges and assessors (people who help judges), but it uses clerks and offices belonging to the Court of Québec. What makes this court unique is that not everyone can bring an action there. The Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse (Human Rights Commission) decides which complaints it will bring before the Tribunal. The advantage is that the Commission pays the fees for presenting a complaint!

Appeal Courts

These courts hear appeals from judgments given by first-instance courts. Appeals are always based on questions of law. This means that no witnesses appear in these courts, because all the issues of fact (what actually happened) have already been decided. Only points of law are debated (how should the law be applied to the facts).

In Quebec, the appeal courts are the Federal Court of Appeal, the Court of Appeal of Québec and the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Federal Court of Appeal
The Federal Court of Appeal decides whether certain Federal Court decisions are well-founded. It can also hear judicial review requests regarding decisions of federal agencies like the CRTC.

The Court of Appeal of Québec
Someone who wants to challenge a judgment of a first-instance court comes before the Court of Appeal of Québec. However, decisions of the Federal Court can only be reviewed by the Federal Court of Appeal. Also there is no appeal allowed from decisions of the Small Claims Court.

Not everyone gets to challenge the decisions, though! Only certain decisions can automatically be appealed (criminal convictions, for example). In other cases, you have to ask permission to appeal a decision.

To win, the appellant must convince the 3 judges on the appeal court that the first judge made a mistake of law or that he based his decision on factual conclusions that were not supported by the evidence presented. The other party (called the “respondent”) can argue the opposite.

Apart from making decisions about disputes, the Court of Appeal of Québec deals with controversial questions of how to interpret the law. This procedure is called a reference. Sometimes, in first-instance courts, two schools of thought emerge on a question of law, the interpretation of an article of a law, for example. The Court of Appeal decides which interpretation should be followed.



The Supreme Court of Canada
The famous Supreme Court of Canada, which has 9 judges, is the final court in the land. Except for certain criminal cases, permission is needed to appeal a judgment to the Supreme Court. This permission can be given based on the file only, so that the people involved don't have to go all the way to Ottawa.

The Supreme Court hears appeals from decisions made by provincial or territorial courts of appeal, or by the Federal Court of Appeal. It decides provincial references (like the Quebec secession reference, for example) and questions submitted by the the federal government, such as the legality of gay marriage.

Important Dates in the History of the Quebec Judicial System