Articles 2021

This article reviews the decision of the Ontario Superior Court in the case of Kin v Ecclesiastical. The application was brought as a result of the claim brought by the purchaser of the property for damages due to the discovery of underground storage tanks. The applicants were the defendants in the claim and the issue dealt with by the court, and reviewed in this article, relates to the determination of insurance coverage and application of the pollution exclusion clauses.

This article provides an explanation and overview of the new administrative penalty regime (“AMP”) proposed for the enforcement of Ontario's environmental laws. The article reviews the process for the issuance of an AMP under the proposed regulations and the approach applied for the calculation of penalty amounts. Note that the associated draft regulations implementing the administrative penalty regime have not yet been posted on the ERO for review and comment.

Please find below our summaries of the civil decisions of the Court of Appeal for the week of April 4, 2022.

Are municipalities free to conduct themselves as they see fit in proceedings before the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT, formerly known as the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal and before that, the Ontario Municipal Board) without the threat of costs being awarded against them? In short, the answer is no. Municipalities are not exempt from cost awards. This article explains why.

Gowling WLG 's Expropriation Law Group summarizes several complex and compelling expropriation cases from across Canada in 2021. The team highlights a number of important issues and key takeaways for those parties involved in the expropriation process. The court decisions are not listed in rank order.

On Jan. 1, 2022 amendments to the Ontario Planning Act were proclaimed. As a result of these amendments, a good number of unfortunate traps have been done away with. This article summarizes those amendments.

Ronak Shah and George Boynton Payne discuss a growing trend among organizations to include privacy and data governance metrics and disclosure as part of their environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting framework, and highlight practical steps an organization can take to move beyond a traditional regulatory compliance approach to privacy and security.

Ontario and BC courts have recently taken conflicting approaches to the standard of review of jurisdictional decisions in international commercial arbitration under the UNCITRAL Model Law. In this article, Chloe Snider and Karin Kazakevich explore this case law in detail, including the theoretical differences between the correctness standard and a hearing de novo.