COVID-19

The defendant government brought a motion to transfer the plaintiff's action challenging mandatory COVID-19 vaccination laws from Ottawa to the Toronto Region.

The government sought to have the plaintiff's Charter claims heard alongside a similar application already scheduled in Toronto.

The court dismissed the motion, finding that transferring the action would result in a loss of discovery rights for the plaintiff, risk duplication of evidence, and create a risk of inconsistent verdicts between the Charter and Human Rights Code claims.

The court concluded there was no connection between the action and the Toronto Region to justify a transfer.

The applicants, operators of a restaurant, brought a constitutional challenge against the Reopening Ontario Act and its Step 3 Regulation, specifically targeting the masking and proof of vaccination requirements.

They argued these measures infringed their rights under sections 2, 7, 8, and 15 of the Charter.

The court dismissed the application, finding no infringement of the Charter rights, as the Charter does not protect purely economic interests or the right to operate a business free of regulation.

The court further held that even if there were an infringement, the public health measures were justified under section 1 of the Charter.

The Crown brought a pretrial application under section 714.2 of the Criminal Code to allow the complainant to testify remotely from Mexico, or alternatively, for an adjournment of the trial.

The complainant, who was unvaccinated against COVID-19, travelled to Mexico shortly before the scheduled in-person jury trial and refused to return due to fears of being forced into vaccination.

The court dismissed the remote testimony application, finding it would be contrary to the principles of fundamental justice given the complainant's voluntary travel, the poor quality of the internet connection, and non-compliance with notice requirements.

However, the court granted the Crown's alternative request for an adjournment to allow the serious sexual allegations to be tried on their merits.

The defendants brought a motion to strike the plaintiff's trial record and dismiss the action, arguing the plaintiff failed to comply with a pre-pandemic court order requiring the action to be set down for trial by June 30, 2020.

The plaintiff argued that the deadline was suspended by the provincial emergency regulation suspending limitation periods due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The court agreed with the plaintiff, finding that the regulation suspended the filing time and that the plaintiff had filed the trial record within the appropriately calculated extended deadline.

The defendants' motion was dismissed with costs.

The plaintiffs, employees of the University Health Network, brought an urgent motion for an interim injunction to prevent their termination for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.

The defendants raised significant jurisdictional issues, arguing the court lacked jurisdiction over unionized employees.

The court granted a short-term interim order preserving the status quo for the named plaintiffs and specific individuals until a proper hearing on the jurisdictional issues could take place, noting the potential for irreparable harm if the employees were compelled to take the vaccine against their will.

The applicant sought a review of a detention order on charges of robbery and failing to comply with a release order.

The court found a material change in circumstances based on the proposed surety's reduced work hours and the applicant's experience in custody during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Applying the Palmer criteria flexibly, the court admitted the fresh evidence and conducted a hearing de novo.

The court concluded that with two strong sureties and a GPS monitoring bracelet, the risk of re-offending or interfering with the administration of justice was sufficiently mitigated.

The applicant was granted bail on strict house arrest conditions.

The applicant father sought sole decision-making authority to vaccinate the parties' 13-year-old child against COVID-19.

The respondent mother opposed the motion, relying on a doctor's note and the child's expressed wish not to be vaccinated.

The court took judicial notice of the safety and efficacy of the vaccine and found that the child's views were not independent but influenced by the mother and her retained doctor.

The court granted the father sole decision-making authority for the vaccine and ordered the mother not to provide the child with anti-vaccine information.

The plaintiff brought a class action alleging that the defendant insurer wrongfully deprived insureds of trip cancellation benefits by offering non-monetary compensation such as credits or vouchers.

On consent, the court certified a single threshold common issue regarding the interpretation of the travel insurance policy and dismissed the claim against the parent bank.

The court found that certifying a single threshold common issue, with the possibility of further common issues later, was an efficient procedure akin to a Rule 21 motion.

The offender was convicted of aggravated assault against his intimate partner, who was pregnant, deaf, mute, and unconscious at the time of the attack.

The victim suffered life-threatening injuries.

The court considered the offender's substance abuse, remorse, and the harsh conditions of his pre-trial custody during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The court imposed a gross sentence of 7 years, reduced to 2 years, 6 months, and 11 days after applying credit for pre-sentence custody.

The father brought an interim parenting motion seeking sole decision-making responsibility and primary residency of the parties' six-year-old child, with a specific concern that the mother had not enrolled the child in school.

The mother sought an adjournment to retain new counsel.

The court granted the adjournment for the broader parenting issues but decided the urgent issue of school attendance.

Finding that in-person schooling is presumed to be in a child's best interests and noting the child's need for socialization and speech therapy, the court granted the father temporary decision-making authority over education and ordered the child to be immediately enrolled in in-person learning.

The accused, a young Black man, sought release from custody through a combined 90-day detention review and a bail review.

He was facing charges including possession of a loaded prohibited firearm and breaching a previous release order by deliberately evading GPS monitoring.

The court found that while the justice of the peace erred in law by failing to explicitly consider the accused's status as a member of a vulnerable population under s. 493.2 of the Criminal Code, the error did not affect the outcome given the egregious nature of the breach and the inadequacy of the proposed release plan.

The court also rejected the accused's argument for release based on fear of COVID-19, noting his refusal to be vaccinated.

The application for release was dismissed and continued detention was found justified.

The accused brought a motion to adjourn his criminal jury trial, arguing that the Chief Justice's order excluding unvaccinated individuals from serving as jurors violated his rights under sections 11(d) and 11(f) of the Charter.

The accused contended that the order excluded a particular group of independent-minded people, thereby depriving him of a representative jury.

The court dismissed the motion, finding that vaccination status is not a relevant characteristic for jury representativeness and that the exclusion of unvaccinated individuals does not violate the Charter.

The respondent mother brought a motion to compel the parties' 14-year-old children to attend in-person schooling.

The applicant father brought a cross-motion seeking an order that the children be permitted to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and that the mother provide their health cards.

The court found that in-person schooling and vaccination were in the children's best interests.

Applying the Health Care Consent Act and the mature minor doctrine, the court held that the children were capable of consenting to the vaccine without parental consent.

The court ordered the mother to provide the health cards and directed that the children attend in-person learning following their first vaccine.

Following the dismissal of its application challenging a COVID-19 business closure order, the applicant argued it should not pay costs because it was a public interest litigant raising novel issues.

The court rejected this argument, finding the applicant litigated for its own financial interests and the statutory interpretation issues were not novel.

The court also held that the Health Unit, having been added as a party on consent, was entitled to costs.

The applicant was ordered to pay partial indemnity costs of $35,000 to the Attorney General and $20,000 to the Health Unit.

The accused, facing serious charges for trafficking carfentanil and possessing numerous firearms, applied for a second bail review under s. 520 of the Criminal Code.

The accused proposed a novel release plan involving 24/7 physical surveillance by a private security firm, GPS monitoring, and strict house arrest with multiple sureties.

The court found that this enhanced plan, combined with the severe difficulties the accused faced in preparing for trial due to COVID-19 restrictions in custody, constituted a material change in circumstances.

The court concluded that the stringent conditions sufficiently attenuated the primary, secondary, and tertiary ground concerns, and ordered the accused's release.

The plaintiff brought a motion to add three additional representative plaintiffs during a certification hearing for a class action regarding COVID-19 business interruption insurance claims.

The court found that the original plaintiff, Nordik Windows Inc., had an arguable cause of action and was a suitable representative plaintiff.

The court also found that the three proposed additional plaintiffs—Hangar9 Studios Inc., Cash and Carry Inc., and Real Food for Real Kids Inc.—had viable causes of action and met the requirements under s. 5(1)(e) of the Class Proceedings Act.

The class action was fully certified with all four as representative plaintiffs.

The plaintiff in a motor vehicle accident case brought a motion to strike the defendants' jury notice due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting backlog of cases in the Southwest Region.

The trial was scheduled for January 2022.

The court noted the unprecedented crisis in the civil justice system and the need to prioritize criminal and family matters.

To prevent the case from becoming stale and to assist the administration of justice, the court provisionally struck the jury notice, allowing the case to proceed as a non-jury trial unless civil jury trials could be accommodated at the time of trial.

The offender pleaded guilty to possession of a loaded prohibited firearm, breach of a weapons prohibition, and possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking.

The Crown and defence agreed that the appropriate sentence before pre-sentence custody credit was seven years.

The court considered the exceptionally harsh conditions of the offender's pre-sentence custody, including frequent lockdowns and COVID-19 restrictions at the Toronto South Detention Centre.

Applying the principles from Duncan and Marshall, the court reduced the otherwise appropriate sentence by two years to account for these harsh conditions, resulting in a five-year sentence.

After applying enhanced credit for time served, the offender was sentenced to 98 days going forward.

In a pre-trial ruling for a first-degree murder trial, the court determined that only prospective jurors fully vaccinated against Covid-19 would be permitted to serve.

The judge reasoned that under section 632(c) of the Criminal Code and section 4 of the Juries Act, an unvaccinated person is physically unable to perform the duties of a juror due to the unacceptable risk of viral transmission in the confined jury room during the pandemic's fourth wave.

The court concluded that accommodating unvaccinated jurors was practically impossible and outweighed by the need to protect public health and ensure the trial's completion.

The moving party, an airline pilot, sought a temporary-temporary reduction in his spousal support obligations due to the catastrophic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the airline industry and his income.

The original support order stipulated that support was fixed and non-variable unless there was a catastrophic change in his employment circumstances.

The court found that the moving party established a strong prima facie case for a material change in circumstances, hardship, and urgency.

The court granted the motion, reducing the monthly spousal support obligation from $10,283.00 to $6,738.00, retroactive to October 1, 2020.