Articles 2023

Esther Nwator and Christine Laviolette offer a brief overview of the recent developments on this hot topic: the status of the legalization of cannabis, associated regulations, connection to Bill C-46 , and some of the key issues emerging from legalization.

Topics covered this week included the breach of an agreement of purchase and sale of land, whether a termination clause in an employment contract violated the Employment Standards Act, and the appeal route when seeking to review an order of a single judge of the Divisional Court (to a panel of that court, not to the Court of Appeal).

Topics covered this week include automobile insurance coverage in the leasing context, family law, limitation periods in the breach of contract context, the need for expert evidence on the standard of care on a summary judgment motion in the professional negligence context, administrative law in the software development tax credit context, and vexatious litigants.

The Supreme Court of Canada has recently granted leave to appeal from the decisions in Bell Canada v. Canada/ National Football League v. Canada, 2017 FCA 249 and Vavilov v. Canada, 2017 FCA 132 and, in so doing, advised that it will hear these three appeals together in order to reconsider the nature and scope of judicial review of administrative decision-makers addressed in Dunsmuir and subsequent cases and has specifically directed the parties to address the question of standard of review.

Following are summaries of this week’s civil decisions of the Ontario Court of Appeal.

Even in class actions, there comes a time when enough is enough and the civil justice system will no longer tolerate an inordinate and inexplicable delay. In Smith v Armstrong et al, 2018 ONSC 2435, R.S.J. Gordon granted the federal defendants’ motion to dismiss a proposed class action for delay and found the plaintiff’s delay to be inordinate where the litigation had not advanced to the certification stage after 17 years.

The winning entry for the 2018 Michael MacNaughton Student Writing Award for Insolvency Law, the article considers the controversial decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal affirming the decision in Redwater Energy Corporation (Re) (2016), 33 Alta LR (6th) 221 (Alta QB).

By the end of the summer in 2018, the Federal and Provincial governments of Canada will have enacted legislation that permits the legal selling, consumption and production of recreational cannabis. As this societal change funnels down, land use controls are crucial for municipalities to regulate for the social health and well-being of their communities amid this change.

Last year, the Ontario Legislature introduced Bill 68, entitled Modernizing Ontario's Municipal Legislation Act, 2017 (“Bill 68”). Bill 68 amended the provisions of the Municipal Act, 2001 (the “Act”) that govern a municipality’s ability to make investments. Now, as a result of Bill 68, a municipality can make an investment under section 418 or 418.1 of the Act.

The 2018 Ontario budget bill passes and funding reform regulations are filed.