Each Monday I intend to provide a potpourri of Quebec (and Canadian) legal developments. Issue 04 takes a brief look at a rare public stance taken by the Court of Quebec, a college ordered to pay $10,000 in damages, and a popular online food delivery company accused of drip pricing.
Reverberations over the Unified Family Tribunal – Court of Quebec fights back
The fallout over the creation of the Unified Family Tribunal is still being felt, and will be for quite some time.
The Montreal family law firm Goldwater Droit has filed a constitutional challenge against Quebec’s Act establishing the Unified Family Tribunal within the Court of Quebec, a law assented in mid-April that has been unanimously castigated by family law experts as being poorly conceived and imbued with shortcomings.
Goldwater is asking Superior Court to suspend the creation of the new tribunal pending a decision on the merits of the case, set to begin this Wednesday.
Goldwater maintains that the legislative reform violates several fundamental constitutional standards and practices, and risks “undermining” access to sound and equitable family justice. She also affirms that the Act imposes procedural constraints that may hinder access to justice and deprive the most vulnerable litigants of their effective right to a competent court, contrary to the principles set out by the Supreme Court in Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia v. British Columbia (Attorney General), 2014 SCC 59.
In perhaps the most explosive allegation set out in the application, Goldwater states that the:
Act now transfers this body of family litigation to the Court of Québec, whose judges are appointed, paid, and administered by the provincial government. This shift, though administrative in appearance, constitutes a constitutional rupture: a vital portion of family law is removed from judges specifically structured to resist local political influence.
The transfer of an entire category of important civil litigation to a provincially controlled court also raises structural concerns: section 96 exists precisely to protect a model in which superior court judges are federally appointed to shield them from local political pressures. (my emphasis)
The Court of Quebec evidently could not resist from issuing a rebuttal. In a singular press release, the Court of Québec “strongly reaffirms the importance of maintaining public confidence in the complete independence, impartiality and competence of its judges.”
Fearing that such allegations could undermine public confidence in its independence and impartiality, the Court of Quebec underlines that the Supreme Court of Canada “clearly established” that judicial independence is a principle that “applies to all courts in the country, whether the judges are federally or provincially appointed.”
Goldwater is pushing it with some of her allegations, but it remains that the courts too are concerned. Quebec Superior Court wrote to Quebec Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette last March to express concerns that the new unified family court would create confusion and make access to justice more challenging, reported Le Devoir.
College ordered to pay $10,000 in damages
A college was ordered to pay $10,000 in damages for failing to ensure the safety of a student following her denunciation of sexual assaults committed by a worker with whom the school collaborated with for pedagogical activities.
The student was studying special education at Cégep de Granby and met the counsellor during a teaching activity. Shortly afterwards, they began a therapeutic relationship that ended a few months later because A.B. could not afford to pay for the counsellor’s services. The personal relationship between them continued and it was during this relationship that the counsellor sexually assaulted A. B.
The matter ended up going to trial, where the intervener was found criminally liable. The court found that he had abused A.B.’s trust in him throughout the relationship to obtain her consent to sexual relations. On at least two occasions, the student did not provide consent. Any consent that was provided, the court deemed to be invalid. The sexual relations constituted sexual assault, concluded the court.
In the meantime, the student denounced the intervener to two teachers and someone from the human resource department at the Cégep. She sought help and asked that measures be taken to prevent her from coming into contact with the intervener again. Instead she alleges no one helped her, and told her to keep quiet.
The school argued that A. B.’s recourse was extinguished by prescription. It also maintained that there was no prepositional relationship (lien de préposition in French or a relationship of subordination) with the intervener, which would prevent it from being held liable. The Cégep also argued that there was no fault on its part that could give rise to liability.
Court of Quebec Judge Sophie Lapierre dismissed the college’s arguments, noting that the Cégep’s liability was not sought because of the sexual assaults committed by the intervenor, but because of its own failings with respect to A.B. and those of its teachers and employees. .
“The seriousness of the Cégep’s failings and its lack of introspection in this regard, to the point of continuing to claim that it was not at fault at the hearing, perpetuated A. B.’s psychological distress and slowed down the process she had begun on the road to psychological recovery,” held Justice Lapierre in A.B. c. Cégep de Granby, 2025 QCCQ 2309.
Competition Bureau sues DoorDash for drip pricing
DoorDash, a popular online food ordering and food delivery American-based company, is being accused of drip pricing by the Competition Bureau.
An investigation by the Bureau found that consumers were unable to buy food and other items at the advertised price on DoorDash’s websites and mobile applications because of mandatory fees that were added at checkout. These fees include service fees, delivery fees, expanded range fees, small order fees and regulatory response fees.
The Competition Bureau alleges that DoorDash Inc., and its subsidiary DoorDash Technologies Canada Inc. have been practicing drip pricing for a decade, allegedly making almost a staggering $1 billion in mandatory fees from consumers.
The Bureau also alleges that the way certain fees are represented on the company’s platform give the impression that they are taxes, “where, in reality, they are charges imposed at DoorDash’s discretion,” said the Competition Bureau.
The federal watchdog filed an application before the Competition Tribunal to stop DoorDash from engaging in deceptive pricing and discount advertising, halt the practice of portraying fees as taxes, pay a penalty and issue restitution to consumers who purchased through DoorDash’s platform.
The Quebec Court of Appeal recently ordered Air Canada to pay more than $10 million in punitive damages in a class action, the third significant case dealing with unbundled pricing over the past year.
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