I'd say a lot of improvements have been made to Ontario's justice system in recent years. A lot more bilingual people are being appointed to the judiciary. Could more improvements be made? Absolutely. Improvements can always be made. No doubt about that.
Does it cause delays when someone requests a trial in French? I'd be lying to you if I said no. It obviously does. If an English case is assigned to me, it'll be a lot easier to present that case in court, and much faster than a French case. That's obviously the fact of the matter.
It's not just as a result of the availability of bilingual judges, who aren't as numerous as unilingual anglophone judges. It's also determined by the staff of the courts. There are obviously fewer bilingual personnel. That's the way it is.
I recently read that Franco-Ontarians make up nearly 5% of the population of Ontario. However, French cases don't make up 5% of the caseload at the Court of Appeal for Ontario. This shows that francophones decide to appear in English, and they probably do so for one reason: they can't find a bilingual or francophone lawyer. Perhaps they simply prefer to appear in English because they don't want to wait years to have their case heard.
There are definitely deficiencies, and we're working to address them. One of the active committees studying this issue in Ontario is the French Language Services Bench and Bar Advisory Committee, the advisory committee of Judge Rouleau. Judge Rouleau was appointed by the Attorney General of Ontario specifically to examine this question and to determine whether measures could be put in place to improve the situation.