Law in Quebec

News about Quebec legal developments

Quebec Court of Appeal

  • Revenue Quebec can issue demand letters to third parties outside of the province

    The Quebec Court of Appeal has ruled the province’s tax authority can issue demand letters and request the disclosure of financial information from third parties outside the province to determine whether a taxpayer is subject to the province’s tax laws.

    The precedent-setting ruling will potentially have a substantial impact as it is widely expected to spur Revenue Quebec to issue more demand letters to third parties outside the province even though questions remain over the scope of the ruling, tax lawyers say.

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  • French language still needs protection rules Quebec appeal court

    A bid to overturn Quebec’s sign law by a group of anglophone merchants suffered yet another setback after the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld two lower court rulings that held that the French language is still vulnerable in Quebec and continues to need protection even though it has made “modest progress” in recent decades.

     

     

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  • Errors by trial judge prompts new trial for woman convicted of killing her two daughters

    Errors by trial judge prompts new trial for woman convicted of killing her two daughters

    A Quebec woman, who was found guilty of first degree murder of her two young daughters in 2013, will face a new trial after the Quebec Court of Appeal found the trial judge made a series of glaring errors when instructing the jury, partly because of language differences.

    In a ruling that was warmly embraced by criminal defense lawyers, the appeal court reiterated the importance of vigorously applying the concept of beyond a reasonable doubt, provided guidance over the use of video interrogations, highlighted the importance of judges responding to queries by juries, and chastised the trial judge over the confusing directives she gave over the mental state of the accused. All of which prompted more than one criminal lawyer to wonder why Quebec Superior Court Justice Carol Cohen, who usually handles civil cases, was handed such a high-profile criminal case.

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  • University can recoup pension monies

    Carleton University won the right to reclaim nearly $500,000 in pension benefits made to a former political science professor who was missing for years before his remains were found in the woods near his Quebec home after the Quebec Court of Appeal held that the pension plan plainly states that the benefits ceased when the beneficiary died.

    The ruling, which essentially upheld a lower court ruling but not for the same reasons, appears to have broadened the scope of several Civil Code of Quebec provisions by applying a “generous and liberal interpretation” to unjust enrichment and the legal presumption surrounding absentees, according to legal experts.

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  • Appeal court overturns $5.6 million award

    A lower court ruling that awarded $5.6 million to a vessel fleet operator was overturned by the Quebec Court of Appeal after it held that the trial judge erred by applying the Civil Code of Quebec to settle a dispute instead of Canadian maritime law.

    In a majority decision, the appeal court held that disputes concerning the repair and supply of engine parts to a ship is subject to Canadian maritime law, and therefore common law rules apply rather than civil law rules of delictual liability. As Canadian maritime law applies, the appeal court reaffirms it is the common law of contract and tort that applies to these cases.

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  • New murder trial ordered following judge’s inadequate instructions

    The Quebec Court of Appeal ordered a new trial of a man convicted of killing three people because the trial judge provided inadequate instructions to the jury over the weight that should be given to post-offence conduct and because he failed to warn the jury that the testimony of the prosecution’s expert went beyond the bounds of his expertise.

    The ruling, the second time in six years that the Quebec appeal court set aside a murder conviction and ordered a new trial because of testimony provided by psychiatrist Sylvain Faucher, highlights pervasive concerns about expert bias and examines the credence that should be given to post-offence conduct, according to criminal lawyers.

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  • Total amount of legal fees not necessarily covered by solicitor-client privilege rules Quebec appeal court

    The total amount of professional billings paid to lawyers working on a mandate for public bodies is not necessarily automatically protected by solicitor-client privilege ruled the Quebec Court of Appeal.

    In what is described as a precedent-setting ruling, the Quebec appeal court decision provides much-needed guidance and strikes a delicate balance between professional secrecy and public access to documents, according to legal experts.

    “The importance of this lies with the distinction the Quebec appeal court makes between professional secrecy and public access to documents regarding legal fees paid by public bodies to lawyers,” said Pierre Trudel, a former director of Université de Montréal’s Public Law Research Centre. “The decision provides helpful guidance over what should remain protected by professional secrecy and what should be accessible to ensure public access to documents.”

    But Bernard Pageau, who successfully plead the case, is under no illusions. Even if a leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada is not filed or if the decision is not overturned, Pageau expects the ruling to upend longstanding practices by Quebec public bodies and the provincial Access to Information Commission gradually and begrudgingly.

    “If it is a final decision, it will take some time before public bodies react and implement the changes,” said Pageau, the senior director of legal affairs at Québecor Média inc. “There may be public bodies that erroneously interpret the ruling or who will refuse (to grant access to documents) and we will end up having to bring the matter before the Quebec Access to Information Commission. But having a hearing before the Commission takes up to a year. That is a denial of democracy which prevents a citizen from exercising his democratic rights.”

    In a unanimous decision, the Quebec appeal court held that legal billings are prime facie protected by professional secrecy because it generally contains a description of accomplished tasks, services rendered and often advice given but the total amount of legal fees paid to a lawyer working on a mandate for public bodies, such as municipalities or school commissions, are not automatically covered by solicitor-client privilege.

    In a bid to reconcile the fundamental importance of privilege attached to the solicitor-client relationship with the principle of public access to documents, Trudel points out that Quebec appeal court Justice Paul Vézina introduced a two-step test. The first part of the test involves determining the “scope of the secrecy, that is whether the information is covered by solicitor-client privilege,” said Justice Vézina in a 19-page ruling in Kalogerakis c. Commission scolaire des Patriotes, 2017 QCCA 1253. Justices Robert Mainville and Denis Jacques (ad hoc) concurred with the August 22nd decision.

    If it is, then the second part of the test comes into play: “whether or not this is one of the rare cases where it is justified to dismiss and allow the disclosure of information that is otherwise inaccessible,” added Justice Vézina in a decision that overturned the judicial review by Quebec Superior Court Justice Suzanne Courchesne and restored a decision by Court of Quebec Justice Diane Quenneville in Kalogerakis c. Commission scolaire des Patriotes, 2014 QCCQ 4167.

    “With this decision, citizens and taxpayers will have more access to the total amount of legal fees disbursed by public bodies,” said Pageau. “There will be exceptions. It will always depend on whether disclosing the total amount will disclose confidential information. But now the burden of proof rests with public bodies to prove that.”

    The case dates back to 2010 when a journalist working for the tabloid Journal de Montréal sought to find out the amount that a Montreal suburb paid lawyers in a suit launched by a citizen. The newspaper also wanted to know how much four Quebec school commissions paid in legal fees in a class action suit that was filed against them. In both cases the Quebec Access to Information Commission refused to provide the information, holding that the amount of legal billings is information protected by solicitor-client privilege as per section 9 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Commission relied, as it has for more than a decade, on the decision Commission des services juridiques c. Gagnier, [2004] CAl 568 – a ruling that held that legal billings are automatically protected by professional secrecy. “Since 2004, we could obtain nothing,” said Pageau. “It was systematic. As soon as we made a request for an access to information document asking how much in legal fees was spent in a case, they would simply respond we cannot because it was covered by solicitor-client privilege.”

    The City of Terrebonne, a Montreal bedroom community, and the four school commissions argued that disclosing legal billings would reveal the financial means it has to defend itself and could compromise its ability to reach an out-of-court settlements.

    Justice Vézina dismissed the arguments as speculative and unconvincing. He said that disclosing the total amount of legal billings does not infringe solicitor-client privilege in these cases because it does not reveal the services or advice provided by lawyers.

    Just as importantly, Justice Vézina held that the objective of the province’s Act respecting Access to documents held by public bodies and the Protection of personal information is to spur “informed debate” and that cities and elected officials are accountable to voters.

    “Municipalities have public funds to manage, and it is in the public’s interest to know what kind of resources a municipality devotes to legal fees,” noted Trudel. “That can be an indicator of how a municipality is managed. That is of public interest.”

    Legal counsel for both the City of Terrebonne and the school commissions did not return calls.

    This article originally appeared in The Lawyer’s Daily, published by LexisNexis Canada Inc.

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  • Ottawa given until Christmas to address sex-based discriminatory provisions in the Indian Act

    The federal government dodged a potential crisis that would have halted Indian status registrations after the Quebec Court of Appeal begrudgingly gave Ottawa until Christmas to address sex-based discriminatory provisions in the Indian Act and complete a bill that has been held up by the Senate.

    In a ruling that marks the first time a Canadian appellate court has been called upon to decide whether or not to extend yet again the suspension of a judicial declaration of constitutional invalidity of a legislative provision, the Quebec appeal court scolded the federal government for the “unacceptable delays” and the absence of administrative measures that would have mitigated the discrimination.

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  • Two Montreal protesters awarded $2,000 each in damages by Quebec appeal court

    Two protesters that occupied a public square in downtown Montreal won a partial victory after the Quebec Court of Appeal awarded them $2,000 each for moral and material loss because the police no longer had reason to keep them handcuffed and detained in the back of a police car to drive them to another part of the city.

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  • Quebec appeal court to hear appeals in two Jordan cases

    Nearly a year to the day when the Supreme Court of Canada issued its landmark Jordan ruling, the Quebec Court of Appeal announced that a five-judge panel will hear an appeal late this summer of a decision to stay a murder charge against a Sri Lankan refugee even though the accused has been deported back to his homeland.

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  • Telecom giants must pay millions following SCC’s refusal to hear appeals

    Telecommunication giants Bell Mobility and Rogers Communications must pay millions of dollars to clients who paid excessive cancellation fees after the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear their appeals.

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  • Federal government announced two new appointments as well as a reshuffle in the Quebec courts

    Barely a week after Quebec Minister of Justice Stephanie Vallée called on the federal government yet again to quickly appoint 10 new Superior Court justices in the province, the federal government announced two new appointments as well as a shake-up in the Quebec courts.

    The latest appointments still falls short of what the Quebec government has been demanding. The president of the Quebec Bar, Paul-Matthieu Grondin, said in a tweet published shortly after the nominations that “the federal government MUST appoint judges to the Quebec Superior Court. Yesterday’s appointments are far from enough.”

    Still, the new appointments and the reshuffle is nevertheless widely expected to make a dent in the backlog of cases that have plagued the Quebec criminal justice system, particularly since the landmark Jordan decision by the Supreme Court of Canada issued last summer.

    Despite significant investments and the appointment of 20 Court of Quebec judges over the past six months by the Quebec government to curb delays in the criminal justice system, Quebec is struggling. The number of Jordan-related requests for a stay of proceedings keeps on surging. There were 895 Jordan applications as of late May, up from 684 at the end of March 2017.

    Provincial attorney generals across the country hoping the SCC would back down from the trial timelines set by the Jordan ruling were disappointed after the nation’s highest court unequivocally reaffirmed them recently in R v. Cody 2017 SCC 31. In a unanimous decision, the SCC made it plain that it will not yield to provincial attorneys general struggling with the Jordan timelines.

    Thanks to the appointments and reorganization, there will be four more Quebec Superior Court judges. Over the past month federal Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Jody Wilson-Raybould appointed seven new Quebec Superior Court judges.

    Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Étienne Parent and his colleague Jean-François Émond are heading back to Quebec Superior Court while Quebec Superior Court Justices Simon Ruel and Jocelyn Rancourt were appointed to the appeal court. Also Montreal lawyer Peter Kalichman and Quebec City family lawyer Marie-France Vincent were appointed as Quebec Superior Court Justices.

    Biographies

    Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Étienne Parent, who was appointed as a puisne judge in June 2015, was appointed as a Superior Court judge in Shawinigan. He replaces Quebec Superior Justice Raymond Pronovost, who chose to become a supernumerary judge in July 2016. A 1982 graduate from Université Laval who was admitted to the Québec Bar the following year, Justice Parent led the Quebec Superior Court Commercial Division for the District of Québec from 2007 to 2011, and then became coordinating judge for the District of Arthabaska, a position he held until his appointment to the Court of Appeal.

    In a case of musical chairs, Quebec Appeal Court Justice Jean-François Émond was appointed as a Quebec Superior Court judge for the district of Quebec City, replacing Justice Simon Ruel, who has been elevated to the Quebec Court of Appeal. Justice Émond, received his civil law degree from Université Laval in 1988 and was called to the Quebec Bar in 1989, practised law with the firms of Stein Monast from 2007 to 2009, Desjardins Ducharme Stein Monast from 2003 to 2007, and Huot Laflamme (Marquis Huot) from 1988 to 2003. In May 2009, Justice Émond was named a judge of Quebec Superior Court, and became the coordinating judge of the Commercial Division for the district of Quebec City from 2010 to 2014. In June 2014, Justice Émond was appointed to the Quebec Court of Appeal.

    Justice Ruel, who was appointed to the Quebec Superior Court in 2014, practised mainly in public and administrative law and government affairs while a lawyer. A member of the Quebec Bar (1995) and of the Law Society of Upper Canada (2007), he began his career with the firm Grey Casgrain, and then became a litigator and counsel to the federal Department of Justice, the Privy Council Office, and the Department of Finance. Before his appointment, he was a partner with the firm BCF Business Law in Quebec City; previously, he had been a partner with Heenan Blaikie.

    Justice Ruel participated as counsel in numerous federal and provincial public inquiries and investigations, including the federal Commission of Inquiry into the Sponsorship Program and Advertising Activities, the Cornwall Public Inquiry, and the Commission of Inquiry on the Process for Appointing Judges. He also participated in the coroner’s inquest into deaths caused by Legionnaires’ disease in Quebec City in 2012 and represented the Manitoba Commission of Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Phoenix Sinclair. Justice Ruel currently serves on the executive of the Canadian Bar Association Judges’ Forum.

    Newly appointed Quebec appeal court justice Rancourt received a Bachelor’s of Social Science (industrial relations) from Université Laval in 1981 and a law degree from the same university in 1984. Admitted to the Quebec Bar in 1985, he began his legal career with McDougall Caron in Montreal. In 1988, he joined the firm of Ogilvy Renault (now Norton Rose Fulbright) to practise labour and employment law. Justice Rancourt was national chair of the firm’s labour and employment law group and a member of its national executive committee until his appointment to the Superior Court of Quebec in June 2015. Justice Rancourt published numerous articles and made presentations at conferences on topics related to human rights, labour law, and occupational health and safety.

    Superior Court Justice Kalichman, a well-known Montreal civil and commercial litigator, was prior to his appointment a partner at Irving Mitchell Kalichman LLP. A B.A. graduate from McGill University before attending the Université de Montréal, where he earned a law degree, Justice Kalichman practised as a trial lawyer. He also acted as an arbitrator on the Conseil d’arbitrage des comptes des avocats du Barreau du Québec. Throughout his career, Justice Kalichman received wide recognition for his accomplishments as a trial lawyer, including being named a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, which is recognized as the preeminent organization of trial lawyers in North America. Apart from his involvement in law, Justice Kalichman has been an active member of Montreal’s Jewish community over the past 25 years.

    Justice Vincent, who too graduated from Laval University in 1995, was admitted to the Quebec Bar in 1996. She specialized in family law and became a certified family mediator in 2007. She served as a board member of the Association des familialistes de Québec where she from 2009 and was president from 2011 to 2013.

     

     

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  • Ruling could lead lawyers to think hard before voicing concerns about legal system

    Quebec lawyers seem to have a knack for testing the limits of a lawyer’s ability to openly criticize the legal system.

    When Montreal criminal lawyer Gilles Doré wrote an acerbic letter to then Quebec Superior Court Justice Jean-Guy Boilard criticizing him for being pedant, cantankerous and petty, the case wound up before the nation’s highest court and was thought by many to have settled the issue.

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  • Quebec telecom company ordered to pay more than $3 million in punitive damages

    A Quebec telecommunications firm, Vidéotron Inc., has been ordered to pay more than $3 million in punitive damages to consumers who were charged extra when the Internet service provider unilaterally modified the terms of their so-called “Extreme High Speed” service, held the Quebec Court of Appeal.

    In a decision that examines the scope of contractual obligations, the appeal court held that a unilateral modification clause contained in the contract did not authorize Vidéotron to impose fees that “had not been agreed to in the initial contract or to modify goods and services described” in the contract. The unilateral clause in this case would have meant that consumers waived their rights conferred by sections 12 and 40 of the Quebec Consumer Protection Act (Act) – and that is prohibited by sections 261 and 262 of the Act.

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  • Quebec judge may be a step closer to being removed from the bench

    A Quebec judge who refused to hear a quarrel between neighbours and emphatically insisted that they negotiate a settlement may be a step closer to being removed from the bench after the Quebec Court of Appeal announced it will launch an inquiry on his conduct following a request by the Quebec Minister of Justice Stephanie Vallée. (more…)

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Law in Quebec
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