Proposed Amendments to Saskatchewan’s Class Proceedings Act

On the heels of Ontario’s recent Class Proceedings Act reform, Saskatchewan is now one of several provinces engaging in a review of its current class actions legislation – The Class Actions Act, S.S. 2001, c C-12.01 (the “CAA”) – with a view to reform.

Saskatchewan’s CAA was enacted in 2001. It has been amended twice since then. First, in 2007, to add provisions addressing multi-jurisdictional class actions. More recently, the CAA was amended in 2015 to allow courts to award costs in class proceedings (prior to that, Saskatchewan’s class action regime had been a “no costs” one).

In September 2021, nearly a year after Ontario’s CPA amendments came into force, the Law Reform Commission of Saskatchewan (the “Commission”) published a Consultation Report (the “Consultation Report”) and a call for responses as part of the Commission’s consideration of recommendations for class actions law reform.

The Commission’s consideration of this reform arose in light of the Law Commission of Ontario’s (the “LCO”) Final Report, Class Actions: Objectives, Experiences and Reforms in July 2019 (the “LCO Report”). The LCO Report set out a number of recommendations for class actions reform in Ontario. In 2020, the Ontario government adopted some, but not all, of these recommendations as amendments to Ontario’s Class Proceedings Act.

In its Consultation Report, the Commission compared the LCO’s recommendations against what amendments were ultimately made to Ontario’s CPA. It also highlighted where the LCO and other stakeholders were critical of the amendments to the CPA – most notably with respect to the “superiority” and “predominance” tests introduced at the preferable procedure criterion of the certification stage. Although the LCO had also considered changes regarding multijurisdictional class actions and in relation to costs, the Commission declined to consider similar changes because of the 2007 and 2015 amendments to the CAA addressing these issues.

In light of the LCO’s recommendations and the CPA’s amendments, the Commission identified eight areas of potential reform that could also be applied to Saskatchewan’s CAA: