Statistics Canada’s 2024/2025 figures, released on 1 October 2026, show that completed cases in Canadian adult criminal courts were nearly unchanged, while the number in youth courts increased. Adult courts recorded 232,067 cases, just four fewer than in the previous fiscal year. Youth courts recorded 16,517 cases, up by 1,100, or 7.1%. These are court case counts, not counts of crimes. Statistics Canada can group several charges processed together into one case, so a case is not the same thing as a charge or a person.

Adult criminal courts recorded 927,328 charges, a year-over-year decrease of 8,256. Youth courts recorded 61,611 charges, up by 4,213. The reported average number of charges per case was 4.0 for adult courts and 3.7 for youth courts. These measures describe different parts of the workload that reached courts and received decisions; they do not count offences reported to police, all files awaiting trial or court performance by themselves. A case enters the survey’s case count only after a final decision under the survey definition, which groups charges against an accused person or company processed together.

The elapsed-time indicators describe cases that took more than seven days to resolve. The median time from first court appearance to final decision was 208 calendar days for adult cases, 10 days shorter than a year earlier. The youth-court median was 223 days, an increase of three days. A median is the midpoint: half of the included cases took less time and half took more. Cases resolved within seven days and cases with unknown duration are excluded from this median. Separately, 8.8% of adult cases and 5.3% of youth cases were resolved within seven days of being initiated in court.

The share of cases exceeding the reasonable-delay ceilings set out in the Supreme Court of Canada’s R. v. Jordan decision was 8.0% in adult courts and 6.9% in youth courts. Those shares fell by 1.4 and 0.6 percentage points, respectively, from the previous year. Under the Jordan framework, the presumptive ceiling is 18 months for a provincial court case and 30 months for a superior-court case or a provincial-court case following a preliminary inquiry. Statistics Canada says it cannot distinguish preliminary inquiries that were scheduled from those actually held, and cannot track some cases transferred to superior courts; this can lead to undercounting elapsed time beyond the ceiling.

Among cases that exceeded a Jordan ceiling, 41.1% of adult cases and 46.4% of youth cases ended in a stopped proceeding. The source definition includes not only stays and withdrawals but also dismissals, discharges and certain preliminary-inquiry outcomes. These percentages apply to the subset of cases over the ceiling; they do not say that all cases ended this way. Nor are the 41.1% and 46.4% conviction or acquittal rates. The survey reports case decisions, elapsed time and sentence indicators as separate measures, each with its own denominator and scope.

The table’s 10-year comparison shows adult case counts 33% lower and youth case counts 51% lower than a decade earlier. That should not be read as an equivalent decline in crime. The Integrated Criminal Court Survey replaced earlier adult and youth surveys at different times across jurisdictions, and Statistics Canada says those transitions affected some indicators, particularly appearances and elapsed case times. Changes in case definitions and court coverage also limit comparisons across long periods. The latest annual file covers fiscal 2024/2025; the number of cases decided in court is not a measure of how common offences are in the community.

The survey is intended to cover federal-statute cases heard in provincial-territorial and superior criminal courts; federal courts, appeal courts and the Supreme Court of Canada are outside scope. Important gaps remain: superior courts in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and municipal courts in Quebec, are not available through electronic extraction. Statistics Canada says the missing courts may slightly understate sentence severity and case elapsed times, while the overall effect of under-coverage is unknown. Data come from court administrative records; having a census design does not remove the risk of missing cases. The annual file is final, while quarterly preliminary data are released only for jurisdictions able to report them.