Helen Gray

The defendants moved for an order compelling the plaintiff to re-attend discovery and for the defendants to be present during her examination.

The plaintiff cross-moved to exclude the defendants from her discovery and from each other's discoveries, citing psychological distress.

The court dismissed the plaintiff's motion, affirming the inherent right of parties to attend discoveries.

While not finding exceptional circumstances for full exclusion, the court ordered the plaintiff's examination to proceed via video conference, with the plaintiff and her counsel in one room and the defendants and their counsel in another, to mitigate potential distress.

The plaintiff was ordered to pay costs thrown away due to the cancellation of the original examinations.

The Plaintiffs brought a refusals motion seeking answers to questions refused during the examinations for discovery of the Attorney General of Canada's representatives.

The questions pertained to information gathered during inquiries into the torture of Canadian citizens by foreign governments, the adoption of non-party inquiry testimony, production of in camera inquiry transcripts, and underlying evidence for allegations made against the Plaintiffs.

The court analyzed each refusal discretely, rejecting a global proportionality argument, and ordered some questions to be answered while upholding refusals for others, particularly those asking the AGC to adopt non-party testimony.

The plaintiffs in three separate actions against the Government of Canada brought motions to strike Canada's Statements of Defence for failure to provide an adequate List of Documents.

In support, they served summonses to examine three government officials.

Canada brought a preliminary motion to quash the summonses, arguing it was immune from having its List of Documents challenged and that the summonses were an abuse of process.

The court dismissed Canada's motion, finding that the Crown's List of Documents can be challenged similarly to an Affidavit of Documents, and that the summonses were not an abuse of process, though the court imposed terms to prevent overreaching.