Law in Quebec

News about Quebec legal developments

Supreme Court of Canada

  • Jordan applications keep on rising

    The numbers seem to be growing by the day. Ever since the Supreme Court of Canada issued its landmark Jordan ruling on July 2016, the pressure on the justice system seems to be growing. Not a day seems to go by without some horror story about some criminal being let off because of the new deadlines set by the nation’s highest court.

    Last July in R. v. Jordan 2016 SCC 27, the SCC criticized the country’s legal system for its “culture of complacency” and the ruling set out new rules for an accused’s right to be tried within a reasonable time frame. The Jordan decision laid down a ceiling of 30 months for matters before Superior Court cases to be completed. Provincial court trials should be completed within 18 months of charges being laid, but can be extended to 30 months if there is a preliminary inquiry.

    The Quebec criminal justice is struggling to comply with the new rules, implicitly acknowledged the Quebec Minister of Justice Stéphanie Vallée when she announced the new investments last December.

    Now there are hard figures to back up those concerns. The Quebec Director of criminal and penal prosecutions (DPCP) revealed recently that there are 684 Jordan applications as of March 23, 2017, a figure that has tripled in the space of three months. In November 2016, the number of Jordan applications stood at 222. A month later, just before Christmas, they numbered 368.

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  • Supreme Court divided over standard of review for arbitrators

    A teacher’s union can call witnesses from an in camera school board meeting to testify about a dismissal ruled the Supreme Court of Canada divided by the kind of judicial standard of review that should apply to an arbitrator’s decision.

    The ruling opens the door for employees to examine members of a decision-making authority over motives leading to a disciplinary sanction, reaffirms that deference must be shown to arbitrators in order to “preserve the expeditious, effective and specialized dispute settlement method represented by grievance arbitration,” and by the slimmest of margins held that the standard of review applicable to arbitrator’s decisions is not correctness but reasonableness.

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  • Revenue Canada investigation highly reprehensible, says court

    A “highly reprehensible” and illegal probe by the Canada Revenue Agency that failed to draw the distinction between a civil tax audit and a criminal tax investigation has put into jeopardy several tax evasion criminal cases involving Quebec construction companies and corruption charges against former federal civil servants, according to tax experts.

    In a precedent-setting ruling that appears to bring more clarity to the leading Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Jarvis , [2002] 3 SCR 757, Court of Quebec Justice Dominique Larochelle held that the evidence produced to charge the owner and three other company officials of a Montreal company, B.T. Céramiques, was obtained illegally because federal tax officials crossed the “Rubicon” and failed to inform the taxpayers that the inquiry had turned into a criminal investigation, thereby breaching their right to freedom from self-incrimination and right to reasonable expectation of privacy guaranteed under s.7 and s.8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

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  • First Nations can now pursue claims prior to proving Aboriginal rights and title

    First Nations can now bring tort claims founded on Aboriginal rights and title before those rights are formally recognized by a court declaration or government agreement after the Supreme Court of Canada refused to end lawsuits by Aboriginal communities against natural resource companies.

    The SCC’s decision to dismiss the applications for leave to appeal paves the way for a $900 million class action filed by two Quebec Innu First Nations against Iron Ore Co. of Canada (IOC) and a separate suit by two north-central British Columbia First Nations against Rio Tinto Alcan Inc. over its diversion of water from the Nechako River since the 1950s.

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  • Securities class actions harder to launch after Supreme Court ruling

    A ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada that dismissed a proposed securities class action against a Montreal pharmaceutical company will likely make it more difficult for investors to launch these kinds of lawsuits in the future, say class action and securities lawyers.

    In a ruling that marked the first time the nation’s highest court examined a case involving secondary securities market liability regimes, the SCC held that in order for plaintiffs to be able to proceed with a securities class action they must provide courts with “sufficient evidence” to show a “realistic chance” of success.

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  • Controversial “dying with dignity” legislation brings discussion around euthanasia to the forefront

    A landmark bill that has thrust debate around end-of-life care into the national political arena by legalizing medically assisted death in Quebec can withstand court challenges and even co-exist with provisions in the Criminal Code against assisted suicide and euthanasia, assert Quebec legal observers.

    In a historic vote, after nearly five years of heart-wrenching deliberations across the province by a cross-party committee of the National Assembly that received 273 briefs and heard 32 experts as well as 239 individuals and organizations, about 80 per cent of Members of the National Assembly approved Bill 52, An Act Respecting End-of Life Care. Beyond providing guidelines to help patients who want to end their pain, the legislation sets protocols for doctors sedating suffering patients and aims to expand palliative care across the province.

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  • Truth & Consequences: Whistleblowing legislation raises thorny issues

    When Edgar Schmidt launched an atypical lawsuit against the Attorney-General of Canada accusing Ottawa of circumventing a legal requirement to properly review the constitutionality of draft legislation, the soft-spoken lawyer was prepared to pay the price for revealing a long-standing practice that strikes at the heart of the federal legislative process.

    The riposte was swift. The day after the 61-year old senior lawyer of the federal Department of Justice filed his claim before the Federal Court of Canada in December 2012, he was suspended without pay. Schmidt would have preferred to keep working, but is now retired and living on a reduced pension. While disappointed with the “vengeful attitude” displayed by his former employer and the snub he has felt by some former colleagues, he has no regrets over his actions. “Quite frankly, I don’t think there was anything wrong with I did,” says the former general counsel of the Legislative Services Branch, the group responsible for drafting and examining bills and regulations. “There is nothing wrong in seeking to uphold the rule of law. There is nothing wrong in seeking the court to clarify one’s instructions when the instructions one is getting seems in conflict with the law.”

    Schmidt joins a growing list of Canadian whistleblowers who quickly discover that disclosing potential wrongdoing in the workplace almost always leaves them vulnerable. Schmidt’s court case raises thorny issues over the nature of the professional responsibilities and ethical obligations of government lawyers. But it also underscores the tension that exists between the duty of loyalty an employee owes to his employer, freedom of expression as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and federal and provincial whistleblowing legislation that aims to protect whistleblowers from retribution by their employers.

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  • New trial ordered in the notorious case of Guy Turcotte

    When the Quebec Court of Appeal ordered a new trial in the notorious case of Guy Turcotte, the former cardiologist who was found not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder in the 2009 stabbing deaths of his two young children, it took the exceptional step of overturning a verdict largely based on a ruling that was not yet rendered by the nation’s highest court, note legal experts.

    The Quebec Court of Appeal, relying on guidance provided by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Bouchard-Lebrun, 2011 SCC 58, [2011] 3 SCR 575 issued five months after Turcotte’s murder trial, held that Quebec Superior Court Justice Marc David’s  instructions to the jury were “deficient, which necessarily had a major impact on the verdict.”

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  • Workplace privacy: “People don’t understand it”

    Workplace privacy, an issue few seriously thought about even a decade ago, has become a conundrum for employers. The ubiquitous presence of mobile technology, the explosive evolution of social media coupled with shifting and seemingly contradictory attitudes towards privacy as well as an evolving legal landscape have left in-house counsel in a quandary. Even outside of work, questions linger around the scope of employee privacy and the extent to which employers can keep tabs on employees.

    No wonder then when Borden Ladner Gervais LLP recently ran a seminar on workplace privacy in Toronto in the wake of a much publicized Supreme Court of Canada ruling that has divided privacy lawyers over its significance, the turnout out was nearly twice as much as expected.

    “Privacy is on people’s minds,” says Robert Weir, an employment lawyer who led the seminar.  “People don’t understand it, don’t get it.”

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  • Top court overturns two decisions by Quebec Court of Appeal in the space of a week

    It should come as no surprise if the Quebec Court of Appeal is nursing bruised egos. In the space of a week, the nation’s top court overruled two decisions by the Quebec Court of Appeal.

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  • News roundup: Tainted water, a falling-tree fatality and a lawyer fined for tax evasion

    The Minister of National Defence is considering appealing a recent class action ruling that awarded $15,000 to residents of a small town near Quebec City inconvenienced  by the contamination of well water by a known carcinogen.

    Quebec Superior Court Justice Bernard Godbout ruled that the class action suit launched by the townspeople of Shannon failed to prove that trichloroethylene (TCE), a solvent used on a nearby army base to clean artillery and ammunition, was responsible for abnormally-high cancer rates in the town. Shannon, a community of 2,000 people, is located near the Canadian Forces Base Valcartier, a huge military defence complex.

    “The evidence did not demonstrate that it is probable that the spilling of TCE contaminated the groundwater under the municipality of Shannon, making it the cause of an abnormally-high number of cancer cases, disease and other allergic reactions,” Godbout wrote in his judgment.

    Justice Godbout found however that the contamination of well water of TCE was an inconvenience to residents and ordered the government to pay compensation of $15,000 to about 300 affected residents who were among the 2,700 present and former residents lending their name to the class-action suit.

    “We will review the decision in order to evaluate next steps,” said Minister of National Defence Peter MacKay in a press release.

    In August 2006, a 27-year old Quebecer was in the driver’s seat of his parked car when an old poplar tree crashed down onto his vehicle during a violent storm, and killed him.

    A coroner’s report on Gabriel Rossy’s death confirmed the tree that fell on him was found to be 90 per cent rotten and had been “dangerous” for at least one or two years.

    His family sued the City of Westmount for failing to maintain the tree, but a Superior Court judge dismissed the action, saying it was a matter that should be dealt with through the province’s Automobile Insurance Act – a ruling that was overturned by the Quebec Court of Appeal in November 2010 who found that the car had nothing to do with Mr. Rossy’s death.

    In a ruling that marked the first the Supreme Court of Canada tackled Quebec’s no-fault insurance plan, the nation’s highest court restored the lower court ruling and dismissed the lawsuit against Westmount. The top court ruled Rossy was using his vehicle as a means of transportation when the accident occurred, and as a result his family must turn to Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ), the provincial automobile insurance board, for compensation.

    “This is enough to find that the damage arose as a result of an “accident” within the meaning of the Act and that the no-fault benefits of the scheme are triggered. Therefore, the respondents’ civil claim is barred and they must turn instead to the SAAQ for compensation,” wrote the SCC in a 7-0 decision.

    “The Court of Appeal erred in interpreting the Act too narrowly,” added Justice Louis LeBel who penned the decision. “Such an interpretation risks unduly restricting the  intended application of Quebec’s no-fault scheme and must therefore be rejected.”

    A Montreal lawyer, charged following a Canada Revenue Agency investigation of an art-donation scheme, was fined $840,000 after pleading guilty to a tax evasion charge before the Court of Quebec.

    Stéphane Saintonge “voluntarily contravened the Income Tax Act in 2003 by enabling a third party to obtain an ineligible amount of tax deductions for the donation of artwork to the Municipality of Larouche,” said Canada’s Revenue Agency.

    The scheme consisted of backdating a series of transactions in order to unduly boost the tax credits claimed, according to the Revenue Agency.

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  • Anti-SLAPP – A look at Quebec developments

    Barely three weeks after a Quebec judge rendered a landmark ruling that dismissed a $150,000 action after it was held to be a strategic lawsuit against public participation, otherwise known as SLAPPs, a national organization approved a Model Act aimed at reinforcing existing remedies to deter abusive lawsuits.

    In an eagerly awaited judgment, Quebec Superior Court Justice Danielle Turcotte found that a defamation suit launched by Les Constructions Infrabec Inc. against a citizen who asked questions at a municipal council meeting was “motivated by an attempt to intimidate,” marking the first time that a ruling has applied an anti-SLAPP bill sanctioned by the Quebec government on June 2009.

    Only Quebec has anti-SLAPP legislation. In April 2001, British Columbia enacted anti-SLAPP legislation but it was short-lived as it was repealed five months later. Anti-SLAPP bills were also introduced in New Brunswick in 1997 and in Nova Scotia in 2003, but were never passed.

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  • Growing trend of unrepresented litigants is disturbing, says judge

    The surging number of unrepresented litigants trying to navigate the complex demands of law and procedure may leave legislators with little choice but to review and enact simplified rules of practice to make justice more accessible, said the chief justice of Quebec’s Superior Court at a conference examining the disturbing trend.

    The figures are alarming, with an average of 37 per cent of parties representing themselves in civil matters before Quebec Superior Court, revealed Judge François Rolland. In divorce cases before Quebec Superior Court, 36 per cent of Quebecers are unrepresented litigants, a figure that rises to 42.1 per cent in family matters dealing with child custody and separation. Almost 42 per cent of parties appealing a sentence in criminal matters before Quebec Superior Court are unrepresented litigants while 38.8 per cent of individuals facing a motion that could authorize their psychiatric treatment do not have legal representation, prompting Justice Rolland to remark that if anybody “should be represented it seems to me it’s the treatment cases.”

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  • Quebec to appeal ruling allowing common-law couples from seeking alimony

    Quebec will ask the country’s highest tribunal for permission to appeal a controversial court ruling that has opened the door for common-law couples in the province to seek alimony and may lead to a surge in co-habitation agreements, triggered deliberations over the definition of common-law couples, and spurred debate over the role of the judiciary.

    “The Quebec Court of Appeal is not giving choices to the legislator,” said Quebec Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fournier. “We have to see if we have more room to manoeuvre than what the court of appeal is saying, just to be sure to adapt the right solution for a situation lived by more than one million people.”

    In a ruling that touched off a storm of heated debate that is still raging in the province, the Quebec Court of Appeal declared that s. 585 of the Civil Code was unconstitutional because it discriminates against common-law couples by denying them the same recourse to spousal support as people who are married or in civil unions.

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  • Quebec Court of Appeal nixes children’s access to English schools

    In a ruling that deftly circumvented the politically sensitive issue surrounding Quebec’s controversial language law while underlining the need to respect the “boundaries” established by the nation’s highest court, the Quebec Court of Appeal overturned a lower court judgment that would have temporarily allowed ten private-school students from pursuing their studies at English-language schools.

    In an 11-page ruling rendered just two days after Quebec Superior Court granted a safeguard order that allowed the children of nine families to attend government-subsidized English schools until an administrative tribunal ruled on whether they have the right to do so, Appeal Court Justice Pierre Dalphond held that granting the students an exemption would not be in the public interest because it could lead to “serious problems” on the eve of the new school year. (more…)

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Law in Quebec
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