Mattison Chinneck

The appellant police officer appealed a finding of insubordination for conducting an unauthorized CPIC query on his wife's vehicle.

He argued the query was part of an investigation into civilian dispatchers and that the Hearing Officer denied him procedural fairness by refusing disclosure of notes from a 2015 conversation regarding a similar complaint.

The Ontario Civilian Police Commission dismissed the appeal, finding no breach of procedural fairness as the 2015 notes were irrelevant to whether the 2018 query was for official police business.

The Commission upheld the Hearing Officer's conclusion that the query was for personal reasons as reasonable.

The media applicants sought judicial review of a Hearing Officer's decision in a police disciplinary hearing to impose a publication ban on a video exhibit and subsequently allow the exhibit to be withdrawn from the record.

The Divisional Court found that the Hearing Officer erred in principle by failing to apply the proper Dagenais-Mentuck test before granting the ban and by allowing the exhibit to be withdrawn when the media sought to challenge it.

The Court set aside the publication ban and the withdrawal order, directing that the video be made public with the victim's name redacted.

The Court also ordered the police service to provide contemporaneous access to exhibits during future hearings in accordance with the open court principle.

The applicants in the main proceeding sought access to youth criminal records related to a sexual assault investigation for use in a civil action.

The Attorney General and the Chief of Police brought a preliminary motion seeking release of the records to them to determine if other young persons, such as witnesses or victims, should be given notice of the application due to privacy interests.

The court dismissed the motion, holding that the Youth Criminal Justice Act's statutory scheme for access to records does not require notice to witnesses, and the court cannot effectively amend the legislation to create a new notice provision.

The appellant police officer appealed a decision of the Ontario Civilian Police Commission upholding his dismissal for discreditable conduct, insubordination, and breach of confidence.

The misconduct related to his failure to report the kidnapping of an acquaintance and his unauthorized use of a police database to provide information to the victim's brother.

The Divisional Court dismissed the appeal, finding no error in the Hearing Officer's decisions to allow video testimony, admit a criminal trial transcript, refuse a stay for delay, and impose the penalty of dismissal.

The respondents brought motions to strike the appellant's Amended Statement of Issues and Reply, arguing it was served past the deadline set out in the Schedule of Events.

The Assessment Review Board found that its rules do not provide for striking pleadings.

However, because the appellant failed to establish exceptional circumstances for missing the deadline to serve its Amended Statement of Issues, it cannot raise any new issues at the hearing that were not in its original Statement of Issues or its Amended Reply.

The Amended Reply was served on time and may be relied upon.

The respondents (MPAC and the City of Cambridge) brought a motion for disclosure of documents related to the appellant Toyota's excess capital and operating cost calculations for its Cambridge plant.

Toyota opposed the motion, arguing it was premature as the information would be in forthcoming expert reports, that the requests lacked specificity, and that it had already disclosed significant material.

The Assessment Review Board granted the motion, finding that relevance is the primary consideration and that Toyota has an ongoing obligation to disclose relevant documents in its possession.

The Board ordered production of the requested documents, except for a third-party expert report prepared for General Motors, which requires notice to GM.

The appellant appealed the property assessments for his property for the 2017, 2018, and 2019 taxation years.

He did not challenge the valuation but argued he was exempt from taxation based on constitutional and pseudolegal grounds, claiming he was not a 'person' under the Assessment Act.

The Assessment Review Board identified the appellant as an Organized Pseudo-Legal Commercial Argument (OPCA) litigant whose arguments were nonsensical and vexatious.

The Board dismissed the appeals as an abuse of process.

Metro Ontario Inc. brought a motion to compel MPAC to disclose rental information for comparable grocery stores that MPAC relied on in its Statement of Response.

MPAC refused disclosure under section 53 of the Assessment Act without a Board order.

The Assessment Review Board ordered the disclosure of the requested information for the specific properties relied upon, subject to the execution of non-disclosure agreements and after providing notice to the affected third parties.

The Board also granted an extension of the schedule of events, finding that the section 53 application constituted an exceptional circumstance.

In a property assessment appeal, the municipal assessment corporation proposed that its representative, an unlicensed property assessor, also testify as a witness.

The appellants objected, arguing that only licensed paralegals could perform this dual role under the Board's Rules.

The Assessment Review Board held that its Rules do not prohibit an unlicensed representative from acting as both an advocate and a witness.

The Board found that the specific rule permitting paralegals to perform the dual role was enacted to satisfy the Law Society's Paralegal Rules of Conduct, not to restrict unlicensed representatives who are otherwise permitted to appear.

MPAC brought a motion to determine whether an unlicensed representative, specifically an MPAC property assessor, could act as both an advocate and a witness in a summary proceeding before the Assessment Review Board.

The respondents objected, arguing that only licensed paralegals were permitted to perform this dual role under the Board's Rules.

The Board found that its Rules, the Law Society Act, and By-Law 4 do not expressly prohibit an unlicensed representative from acting as both a representative and a witness.

The Board concluded that an unlicensed representative may perform the dual role, declining to follow a previous Board decision to the contrary.