This is general information, not legal advice, and reflects Ontario law as of September 21, 2026.
Two trial courts, easily confused by name
The Ontario Court of Justice (OCJ) and the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (OSCJ) are separate trial-level courts, not two floors of the same building. The OCJ, staffed by provincially appointed judges and justices of the peace, handles adult and youth criminal matters, most family law and child-protection cases, and provincial offences. Almost all criminal charges in Ontario commence in the Ontario Court of Justice, not the Superior Court.
The OSCJ is the court that rolled out AI practice directions in stages — civil and family in November 2025, criminal in February 2026. None of that automatically extends to the OCJ, the same way an OSCJ direction doesn't automatically bind the Court of Appeal for Ontario.
What the OCJ's own site actually says
Checked directly this week: the OCJ's general-information page, its full criminal practice-directions-and-policies listing (roughly 25 documents covering case management, bail, and virtual appearances), and its own Criminal Rules — last amended March and June 2025 — contain zero mentions of artificial intelligence, generative AI, or Ontario Regulation 275/26.
The Ontario Court of Justice's own criminal practice-directions library and Criminal Rules — checked directly, not inferred from the Superior Court's guidance — contain no AI-specific provision as of September 2026.Ontario Court of Justice, ontariocourts.ca, reviewed September 2026
What still binds a lawyer appearing there
The gap isn't total, because two things follow the lawyer, not the courtroom. The Law Society of Ontario's conduct rules — competence, confidentiality, supervision — bind every licensee regardless of which court they're in. And O. Reg. 275/26's certification duty is a Rules of Civil Procedure instrument; it doesn't extend to the OCJ's own Criminal Rules, so it isn't the mechanism that reaches an OCJ criminal matter the way it reaches a civil or appellate one.
Don't assume Superior Court AI guidance follows a file down to provincial court — it doesn't. The LSO's conduct rules are the real backstop for OCJ work. See our breakdown of AI in Ontario criminal defence practice for the Jordan clock and disclosure review, and our tracker of every Ontario court AI disclosure rule for the full set.