The federal government amended the Canada Pension Plan to extend survivor benefits to same-sex partners, but limited eligibility to those whose partners died on or after January 1, 1998, and precluded payments for months before July 2000.
A class action challenged these temporal limits.
The Supreme Court of Canada held that the temporal limits infringed section 15(1) of the Charter and were not justified under section 1.
However, the Court denied fully retroactive relief, finding that the prior exclusion of same-sex partners was based on a reasonable understanding of the law before the Court's landmark decision in M. v. H., and that the government acted in good faith.
The Court also held that estates do not have standing to advance section 15(1) claims.
