Real Estate
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October 17, 2025
We are not in the results business
Back in law school, my criminal law professor told us that our job would be to use every bit of our intelligence, ingenuity and strength, and to work tirelessly, to deliver the best possible outcome for our client. “But,” he told us, “if at the end of the day, someone has to go to jail, make sure that it is your client.” He was warning us not to become so zealous in our representation of our client that we crossed over the ethical or legal lines.
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October 16, 2025
Appeals: Can parties ‘consent’ to them?
When it comes to reviewing the orders of lower courts in Canada, appellate courts have broad jurisdiction. Far from a rubber-stamping process, all appeals involve the assessment of the lower court’s reasoning through the application of standards of review.
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October 16, 2025
INTERESTS IN LAND - Easements - Dominant and servient tenement - Disturbance of an easement
Appeal by appellants from orders arising from easement petition and judicial review petition; application by appellants to adduce additional evidence on appeal. These appeals arose out of a dispute about stairs built on an easement that facilitated access to the Saanich Inlet waterfront.
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October 15, 2025
Removal, oversight and accountability of attorneys in Ontario
When a person loses the ability to manage their finances or personal care, a power of attorney can become a powerful tool. It allows someone — the attorney — to step into the grantor’s shoes and make critical decisions about their property, health and daily life. But with power comes responsibility, and sometimes, abuse.
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October 14, 2025
PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT - Building regulations - Building permits - Conditions precedent - Restrictive covenants - Approval
Appeal by appellants from chambers judge’s decision reinstating restrictive covenant. The respondents obtained a without notice order removing a restrictive covenant from title to a residential property they owned.
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October 10, 2025
SCC clarifies when Quebec 10-year ‘extinctive prescription’ period reboots for collecting on judgments
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 9-0 in a Quebec appeal that filing and serving a notice to seize property counts as a judicial application interrupting the 10-year deadline to collect payment on a judgment — thereby restarting for a further 10 years the “extinctive prescription” period (comparable to a limitation period in the common law provinces) that applies to rights resulting from most money judgments under art. 2924 of the Civil Code of Québec.
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October 09, 2025
Court finds credit union transactions enforceable despite unregistered operations in Alberta
The Alberta Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal and cross-appeal relating to the question of validity and enforcement of transactions in a case where the appellants claimed a Saskatchewan credit union could not carry on business in Alberta.
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October 09, 2025
Adverse possession, municipal parkland: The implications of Kosicki v. Toronto
In a closely divided 5-4 ruling in Kosicki v. Toronto (City), 2025 SCC 28, the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that municipalities and other public bodies in Ontario are not immune to adverse possession claims, unless the land in question is explicitly protected by legislation.
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October 08, 2025
Fraser calls provinces’ demand to scrap Ottawa’s SCC arguments on notwithstanding clause ‘untenable’
Attorney General of Canada Sean Fraser has pushed back against the demands of five premiers that Ottawa should drop its novel arguments at the Supreme Court that there are substantive constraints on governments’ powers to invoke the Charter’s s. 33 “notwithstanding” clause — arguments that those five provinces contend “represent a complete disavowal of the constitutional bargain that brought the Charter into being” in 1982.
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October 07, 2025
Attorney General Sean Fraser tells SCC the law needs to protect people with ‘no voice’
There was a celebratory mood at the opening ceremony for the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2025-26 court year, but Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Sean Fraser and other legal leaders delivered a sober message to the Ottawa courtroom packed with lawyers and judges.