Supreme Court of Canada Revisits Standard of Review Applicable to Administrative Agencies


By Marco Baldasaro and Nathaniel Brenneis

Administrative law governs the activities and powers of administrative agencies appointed by the government. In Alberta, this includes a vast array of agencies such as the Alberta Utilities Commission, the Alberta Energy Regulator, the Labour Relations Board, the Law Enforcement Review Board, the Alberta Human Rights Commission, and the Municipal Government Board. Federally, administrative law applies to the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, and the National Resources Conservation Board, among many others.

In 2008, the Supreme Court attempted to simplify the law regarding the judicial review of administrative decisions in a decision called Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick. The issue before the Court was how judges should treat the decisions of administrative agencies on appeal: should they be deferential to the decision makers (who often have no legal training) or should they hold them to the same standard expected of the courts? Should courts ensure that the decisions are correct, or merely reasonable? Unfortunately, the framework provided by the Supreme Court in Dunsmuir was inadequate. Since that time, Canadian courts have persistently struggled to apply the law in a predictable and consistent manner.

Today, the Supreme Court released two decisions – Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov and Bell Canada v. Canada (Attorney General) – which set out a revised framework for determining the appropriate standard of review to be applied by a court when reviewing the merits of an administrative decision.

Under the revised framework, the presumptive standard of review is reasonableness. That means that the reviewing court must consider only whether the administrative decision, including both the rationale for the decision and the outcome to which it led, was reasonable. If the court determines that the decision is reasonable, it will be upheld – even if the court would have decided differently on its own.

There are two exceptions to the presumptive reasonableness standard. The first is where the legislature has expressly indicated the applicable standard of review. If the empowering legislation states that a correctness standard applies, the courts must respect the legislature’s intention. Similarly, when the empowering legislation provides an express right of appeal, the courts will now apply the ordinary “appellate” standards of review to an administrative decision. These are the standards courts use to decide appeals from lower court decisions: the interpretation of statutes and other questions of law will be decided on the correctness standard, and the standard of “palpable and overriding error” will be applied to an administrative adjudicator’s findings of fact.

The second exception is when the administrative decision raises a constitutional issue, a general question of law of central importance to the legal system as a whole, or a question related to the jurisdictional boundaries between two or more administrative bodies. The Supreme Court has determined that the correctness standard must be applied by the courts to these issues in order to provide a single determinate answer.

These two Supreme Court decisions represent a profound and far-reaching change to administrative law. We anticipate that many administrative tribunals will now face much greater scrutiny from courts on appeal. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s revised framework will not necessarily achieve the desired goal of allowing courts to spend less time deciding how decisions should be reviewed and more time actually reviewing the decisions themselves. For example, more time may now be required to examine whether an administrative decision involves particular issues that must be decided correctly. In addition, courts hearing statutory appeals may now need to spend more time attempting to separate questions of law from questions of fact.

 A link to both decisions is below. Stay tuned for further commentary from McLennan Ross LLP.

The Supreme Court of Canada Overturns Ontario’s Interpretation of the Great Lakes Indemnity Clause


 
On December 6, 2019, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in R. v Resolute FP Canada Inc, 2019 SCC 60. In a 4-3 decision, the Supreme Court overturned the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision, with the majority finding that a contractual indemnity was limited to pollution claims advanced by third parties and could not be relied upon by a “first party” in the face of an order for remediation from the provincial authority. 

Background

In 1977, Grassy Narrows and Islington First Nations began litigation arising from the discharge of mercury into a local river system. The source of the mercury was a pulp and paper mill located in Dryden, Ontario (the “Mill”).

Prior to resolution of the litigation, Great Lakes Forest Products Limited (“Great Lakes”) expressed interest in purchasing the Mill but was concerned about the outstanding litigation. To alleviate these concerns the Government of Ontario granted indemnities to Great Lakes in 1979 and 1982 as against costs and damages arising out of the Mill’s past pollution. 

In 1985, the litigation settled. As part of the resulting settlement agreement, the Government of Ontario entered into a new indemnity with Great Lakes and its predecessor, Reed Ltd. (the “Indemnity”), that replaced the earlier indemnity agreements between the parties.

On August 25, 2011, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change issued a remediation order requiring the maintenance, monitoring and testing of a mercury waste disposal site at the Mill (the “Order”). The Order was issued to both Great Lakes’ successor, Resolute FP Canada Inc. and Weyerhaeuser Company Limited, who had previously owned the waste disposal site.

Resolute and Weyerhaeuser (collectively, the “Defendants”) sought a declaration that the Indemnity applied to the waste disposal site, and as such the Government of Ontario (the “Government”) was required to compensate the Defendants for the costs of complying with the Order.

Decisions of the Lower Courts

The motion judge concluded that the Indemnity covered the costs of the Defendants complying with the Order and granted Summary Judgment. While the Indemnity only applied to defined ‘pollution claims’, the motion judge found the language of the Indemnity clear and unambiguous; the meaning of ‘pollution claims’ encompassed first party claims. 

The majority of the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the motion judge’s conclusion, agreeing that the Indemnity could apply to first party claims. In his dissent at the Court of Appeal, Justice Laskin found that the motion judge significantly erred in both fact and law by concluding that the Indemnity covered first party claims. Absent these errors, Laskin determined that the Indemnity was only to cover pollution claims brought by third parties.

Supreme Court Decision

In a 4-3 majority, the Supreme Court held that the Indemnity did not apply to the Order and that the Defendants were responsible for the costs of complying. The Court substantially relied upon and agreed with Laskin’s dissent, finding that the motion judge made palpable and overriding errors when interpreting the Indemnity. Ultimately, both Laskin and the majority of the Supreme Court focused on the following errors made by the motion judge in his interpretation of the Indemnity:
1.   The motion judge erred in concluding the waste disposal site is a source of ongoing mercury pollution and therefore may give rise to a pollution claim. Rather, the waste disposal site was created as a solution to the mercury pollution and there was no evidence before the courts of mercury being discharged from the site. Thus, the costs associated with the waste disposal site were not pollution claims, as defined in the Indemnity.
2.    The motion judge failed to consider the broader factual matrix and context that gave rise to the Indemnity. The Indemnity at issue was originally a schedule to the 1985 settlement agreement, thus its scope was limited to only the issues considered and defined in that agreement. The scope did not include the ‘mere presence’ of mercury at the waste disposal site, but rather only covered claims for new mercury discharge or the ongoing presence of mercury resulting from prior discharge. Additionally, the motion judge relied on the language of the two prior indemnity agreements between the parties to read commitments into the Indemnity that no longer exist between the parties.
3.   The motion judge fixated on the language of the Indemnity’s first paragraph rather than considering the Indemnity as a whole. The second paragraph of the Indemnity requires that the Government be given notice of any pollution claim such that the Government could carry or participate in the litigation. Additionally, under the third paragraph, the parties of the Indemnity must cooperate in the investigation of any pollution claim. Laskin concluded, and the Supreme Court agreed, that these paragraphs would be meaningless and inconsistently applied if the Indemnity covers first party claims.

Take Away

Past pollution and contaminated lands create unforeseeable risk for corporations, developers, and landowners. The purpose of an indemnity is to allocate that risk. The Resolute decision is a cautionary tale - a party cannot assume its indemnity agreement insulates it from all types of risk and liability. Rather, the Court in Resolute is clear that the terms of an indemnity must be express and unambiguous in defining both what claims and what parties are covered by agreement. Courts are not, it appears, willing to read-in liability and will broadly interpret contractual terms in such a manner.

Federal Government Accepts Alberta’s New Carbon Pricing Program

By Sean Parker and Anna Fitz, Student-At-Law

Today, the federal government announced that it has accepted Alberta’s new Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction ("TIER") Regulation as being compliant with the 2020 federal benchmark for carbon pricing systems. This means Alberta will be regulated by the provincial TIER program, rather than the federal program, for 2020. However, the TIER program will be subject to annual reviews to ensure it meets the rising federal benchmark ($40 per tonne in 2021 and $50 per tonne in 2022).

The federal program allows provinces and territories to develop their own carbon pricing systems. If these proposed systems meet the federal benchmark, as Alberta’s does, then the provincial system applies; otherwise, the federal program applies.

The provincial TIER program requires facilities which emitted more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2 from 2016 onward to reduce their emissions and meet yearly benchmarks. Electricity generators have a different requirement: if they emit more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, they must comply with the benchmark of 0.37 tonnes of CO2 per megawatt-hour. The TIER system allows facilities to offset their emissions and earn, or buy, performance credits. They can also pay into a provincial fund for credit against their emissions. For more information on Alberta’s TIER program and how it works, see our earlier blog post on the subject.