Canada criminal court outcomes: guilty, stayed, withdrawn and delayed cases

How a case can end

• Guilty decision: Statistics Canada reports it as one outcome of a completed case ².
• Stay of proceedings or withdrawal: the Crown stops the case. The Public Prosecution Service of Canada (PPSC) says that if its test is no longer met after charges are laid, the charges should be withdrawn or a stay of proceedings entered ³.
• Withdrawn, dismissed or discharged: Statistics Canada groups these outcomes together in its March 2026 release ².
• Delay: the Jordan ceilings are presumptive limits, and exceeding them can be justified by exceptional circumstances. Courts do not report the reason for a stay or withdrawal to Statistics Canada, so national data cannot show how many stays were for delay ¹.

Who decides whether a case continues

For federal prosecutions, the PPSC guideline on the decision to prosecute, revised on 7 March 2023, says Crown counsel must make the decision objectively and independently from the investigative agency ³. A reasonable prospect of conviction is a standard higher than a bare prima facie case. It does not require a probability of conviction ³.

The guideline says Crown counsel must continue to consider the decision to prosecute criteria throughout all stages of the prosecution ³. No one public interest factor is determinative, and Crown counsel must keep the public interest under review as the case develops ³. For delegated provincial prosecutions, Crown counsel follows the applicable provincial policies ³.

How long cases take

Justice Canada's report on criminal court case indicators related to the Jordan timelines, published in June 2026, uses Statistics Canada data ¹. It measures time from first court appearance to final decision, not from the laying of the charge as in R. v. Jordan ¹. The report says the median case time rose from 169 days in 2016/2017 to 217 days in 2023/2024 ¹. Its body text gives 6% at risk for 2016/2017 and its infographic gives 21,244 at-risk cases and 9,560 stayed or withdrawn for 2023/2024. The table below copies the report's table ¹.

Outcomes and sentences in the March 2026 release

Statistics Canada published Criminal court outcomes of Black accused persons in Canada on 24 March 2026. It covers completed adult criminal court cases from 2016/2017 to 2022/2023, with fiscal years running from 1 April to 31 March ². Black accused persons were 6.2% of all accused persons in the period, with 100,450 completed cases ².

A guilty decision was reached in 42% of cases with a Black accused and 55% with a non-Black accused. Cases were withdrawn, dismissed or discharged in 42% and 28% ². Median time to a final decision was 219 days and 165 days ². Custody was imposed in 29% and 27% of guilty cases. The median custodial sentence was 36 days and 30 days, which the release says is as a rule the time left after credit for pre-sentence custody ².

Gaps in the data

• Superior courts in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan and municipal courts in Quebec do not report to the survey ^1,2.
• Quebec data were not available for 2021/2022, 2022/2023 and 2023/2024 in the Justice Canada report ¹.
• Statistics Canada Table 35-10-0027-01 gives adult criminal court cases and charges by type of decision for 1994/1995 to 2024/2025. It was released on 1 October 2026 and draws on the Integrated Criminal Court Survey ⁴.
• The Justice Canada report notes that the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to increases in case times ¹.