What is disclosure and what happens at a Crown pre-trial?

Disclosure is the material police and the Crown have gathered about your charge: officer notes, witness statements, video or photos, forensic reports, and your criminal record if you have one. Under a 1991 Supreme Court of Canada ruling called Stinchcombe, the Crown has a constitutional duty to give the defence all relevant, non-privileged material, whether it helps or hurts its case.

Your lawyer requests disclosure from the Crown's office handling your case, ideally before your first court date, so there's something to review when you appear. It typically arrives electronically: PDFs, video files, sometimes a disc. Initial disclosure covers the basics; forensic results, expert reports, or extra witness statements often follow later.

There's no fixed deadline in the Criminal Code. A simple case can have disclosure ready by the first appearance. Cases with video, forensic testing, or many witnesses take longer, and it often arrives in stages. If disclosure is slow, that delay counts against the overall clock on your case, which is one reason your lawyer tracks it closely.

Your disclosure usually includes a one-page Crown screening form (also called a charge screening form). It lists your charges and may include the Crown's position on resolving the case. That position can change as more information comes in. A Crown pre-trial is a meeting, usually a call or short conversation, between your lawyer and the Crown to go over the strength of the evidence and whether the matter can resolve without a trial, for example through a plea to a lesser charge or a withdrawal. Only you can decide to accept an offer.

A judicial pre-trial is a separate meeting, this one with a judge as well as your lawyer and the Crown, to narrow the issues before trial and confirm realistic time estimates. It isn't public and it doesn't decide your case. Separately, the Supreme Court's Jordan decision set outer time limits for a case, from charge to the end of trial, before it's presumed to violate your right to a trial within a reasonable time: 18 months for cases staying in the Ontario Court of Justice, and 30 months for cases in the Superior Court. Passing the ceiling doesn't automatically end a case; the Crown can point to exceptional circumstances, and delay caused by the defence doesn't count. The Ontario Court of Justice also sets its own targets: it offers trial dates aimed at finishing within 15 months of the charge being sworn, and within six months both sides are expected to resolve the case or set a trial date. If most of the disclosure hasn't arrived within four months, a judicial pre-trial must be booked. For charges sworn on or after June 1, 2026, an out-of-custody adult case should have no more than three case management appearances unless a judge orders otherwise. These are scheduling targets, not promises. See our sentencing page for what happens after a plea, and our plea page for how that decision gets made.