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Advanced costs denied where applicant could fund litigation and public importance threshold unmet.
The applicant, a municipal deputy fire chief, brought a motion seeking an order that the municipality pay his advanced legal costs relating to a whistleblower complaint and a public interest application alleging municipal conflict of interest by the mayor.
The court considered whether the municipality’s whistleblower policy contained an implied term requiring reimbursement of legal fees and whether advanced costs should be awarded under the test from British Columbia (Minister of Forests) v. Okanagan Indian Band.
The court held there was no basis to imply a contractual term requiring the municipality to fund legal counsel for whistleblowers where the policy was silent on such payments.
Applying the Okanagan test, the court found the applicant was not impecunious and had the ability to fund the litigation himself.
Although the allegations involved public officials, the issues did not reach the level of broad public importance required for an advanced costs order.
Appeal dismissed; Energy Board properly limited public interest assessment to pipeline construction, excluding end-use impacts.
The appellants appealed two decisions of the Ontario Energy Board granting leave to construct a natural gas pipeline to the proposed Greenfield Energy Centre.
The appellants argued the Board erred by limiting its public interest consideration to the pipeline itself, rather than considering the environmental and socio-economic effects of the generating station and the resulting closure of a coal-fired plant.
The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal, finding the Board properly limited its jurisdiction to the specific project before it and correctly deferred to the Ministry of the Environment on the assessment of the plant.
