Monday's Medley (Issue 01)

Each Monday I will provide a potpourri of Quebec legal developments. Here’s the first issue.

SCC declines to hear Mohawk Mothers appeal

The nation’s highest court refused to hear an appeal from the Mohawk Mothers, also known as the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnistensera, who were seeking archeological oversight of excavation work at a university construction site in Montreal.

The Mohawk Mothers allege there are unmarked bodies of Indigenous children buried on and around the grounds of the former Royal Victoria Hospital, which McGill University is renovating.

In 2015, McGill University, in collaboration with the Société Québécoise des Infrastructures (SQI), a provincial body that supports infrastructure projects, began major work to renovate the former hospital. In 2022 the Mohawk Mothers sued McGill and SQI, and obtained an injunction ordering a pause on the university expansion.

A year later the parties reached a settlement agreement that created a panel of archaeologists to assess, identify and advise the parties on techniques that would be used to identify any unmarked graves or burial sites on the site, and to recommend specialists to carry out the work and analyze the data.

The Quebec Court of Appeal, in McGill University c. Kahentinetha, 2024 QCCA 1050, overturned the safeguard order, concluding that the Quebec Superior Court “misunderstood the extent of his power to issue safeguard orders.”

Hydro-Québec ordered to pay $5 million to Innu First Nation

Hydro-Québec was ordered to pay $5 million to the Innu First Nation of Uashat and Mani-Utenam after Quebec Superior Court found that the provincial utility acted in institutional bad faith by failing to honour an agreement with the community reached a decade ago.

An agreement in principle between Hydro-Québec and the Innu of Uashat-Maliotenam, near Sept-Îles, reached in 2014 stipulated that the provincial Crown corporation would pay more than $75 million between 2014 and 2073 to Innu affected by the development of the La Romaine hydroelectric complex.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Thomas Davis castigated Hydro-Québec for failing to comply with its constitutional obligations.

Hydro-Québec’s “stubborn refusal to compromise in the negotiation of the Final Agreement constitutes not only a breach of the requirements of good faith, but also a breach of the duty to act in accordance with the honour of the Crown, a principle of public law that is based on a higher standard than the private law duty of good faith,” said Justice Davis in a 152-page decision in Innus de Uashat et de Mani-Utenam c. Hydro-Québec, 2025 QCCS 40.

“The breach of his obligations arising from the honour of the Crown, independently of any breach of the requirements of good faith, is sufficient in itself to justify his liability,” said Justice Davis. “The Court concludes that Hydro-Québec’s contractual conduct did not comply with its constitutional obligations. Moreover, it was not only the members of the Aboriginal relations team who failed in their obligations at that level – it was also the legal department and senior management.”

Marie-Claude André-Grégoire, who successfully pled the case, said the decision sets a precedent.

“It will help reframe the relationship that Hydro-Québec must have with the First Nations, a relationship that is not strictly commercial,” noted André-Grégoire, a partner with O’Reilly, André-Grégoire & Associés LLP.

Rio Tinto fined $2M for contaminating water

Rio Tinto Fer et Titane inc., operators of a mine at Lac Tio, north of Havre-Saint-Pierre, Quebec, were sentenced by the Court of Québec to pay fines totalling $2 million after pleading guilty to eight counts of violating the Fisheries Act and the Metal and Diamond Mining Effluent Regulations.

“The conviction stems from various deposits of deleterious substances that occurred between February and August 2023, as well as the failure to take a sample following an unauthorized deposit of a deleterious (harmful) substance in November 2023,” according to an Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) statement.

Rio Tinto’s name will now be added to the Environmental Offenders Registry.

Settlement reached in class action dealing with psychiatric patients

An $8.5 million settlement agreement was reached in a class action that alleged that thousands of psychiatric patients were hospitalized beyond the 72 hours of preventative custody, against their will and without a court order, by Quebec hospitals.

Under the Act respecting the protection of persons whose mental state presents a danger to themselves or to others, a doctor may place a person under preventative “confinement” for up to 72 hours, without court authorization and prior to a psychiatric exam, if the mental state of the person “presents a grave and immediate danger to himself or to others.” But after 72 hours, the person must be released, unless a court has ordered an extension of the confinement for psychiatric assessment.

Action Autonomie, a Montreal mental health advocacy group, says that in practice is not what has taken place. It alleged that Quebec hospitals “wrongfully and negligently failed to implement a rigorous protocol and train its medical and hospital staff to ensure that the exceptional measure of institutional custody, which is highly intrusive on fundamental rights, is subject to rigorous supervision and protocols.”

The Quebec Ombudsman and the Quebec Ministry of Health published reports more than a decade ago that highlighted irregularities in the application of the law governing protective custody.

The settlement should not be construed as an admission by or evidence against the parties, underlines the agreement.

Montreal billionaire faces class action

A class action against Montreal billionaire Robert Miller, accused of paying underage girls for sex, was recently authorized by Quebec Superior Court.

The suit was launched by three women who “claim to have been victims of a juvenile prostitution system organized for the sexual benefit” of Miller, according to the ruling.

The suit also targets Miller’s former company, Future Electronics and a number of executives and alleged accomplices.

The plaintiffs allege there could be up to 100 girls who might have been recruited, “always with the assistance of several Future employees,” to have sex with Miller between 1994 and 2006.

“These extremely serious acts allegedly took place over several years, when they were between the ages of 11 and 17,” said Quebec Superior Court Justice Catherine Piché. “The court should not, at this stage, consider the merits of the dispute and it should take the facts as proven, unless they appear improbable or manifestly inaccurate,” added Piché.

The 81-year-old founder of global electronics company Future Electronics has repeatedly denied the allegations. Miller also faces other civil lawsuits filed by four individual complainants.

Law in Quebec