Cross-Border & Canadian Business Blog
Exploring cross-border business opportunities and trends.
What happens when a party claims it misunderstood the legal consequences of a contract, but had in fact obtained legal advice at the time it was executed? The short answer is that it can result in a complete loss of solicitor-client privilege. The Ontario Court of Appeal addressed this issue in One York Street Inc. …
Continue reading “Privilege at Risk: How Pleading Lack of Legal Understanding Can Backfire”
A recent decision from Ontario’s highest court has yielded an unusual result regarding Ontario’s ever-evolving summary judgment regime. Typically, motions for partial summary judgment are difficult to advance and, in many cases, do not proceed to scheduling given their low likelihood of success. However, Kotsopoulos v. Toronto (City), 2026 ONCA 121 (“Kotsopoulos”) raised an unusual …
Continue reading “Partial Summary Judgment Remains Exceptional: Lessons from Kotsopoulos V. Toronto”
In Lundin Mining Corp. v. Markowich, 2025 SCC 39, the Supreme Court of Canada clarified how issuers must identify and meet their disclosure obligations regarding “material changes” under Canadian securities laws. The Court emphasized that issuers must follow a disciplined two-step analysis in which the steps remain analytically distinct. First, an issuer must determine whether …
Continue reading “Lundin Mining v. Markowich: How the Supreme Court Is Shaping Disclosure Practices”
For spouses who find themselves named as co-defendants, a recent decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice is a warning about the limits of spousal privilege. A convenient plot device in law dramas such as Law and Order, spousal privilege protects spouses from disclosing communications between them. However, in Ontario, that privilege is limited …
Continue reading “Spousal Privilege: ‘Til Litigation Do Us Part”
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision in Ontario Securities Commission v. Bridging Finance Inc. et al. (for the purposes of this article, the “Cerieco decision”) arose out of a claims process in the receivership related to the collapse of Bridging Finance Inc. While the broader litigation and regulatory context was complex, the portion of …
Continue reading “Lending to Limited Partnerships: Lessons from the Cerieco Decision”
Introduction On October 23, 2025, the Canadian Securities Administrators (“CSA”) released a Notice of Publication and Request for Comment regarding proposed Coordinated Blanket Order 51-933 Exemptions to Permit Semi-Annual Reporting for Certain Venture Issuers (the “Blanket Order”). A coordinated blanket order consists of harmonized local exemption orders issued by each CSA jurisdiction. Accordingly, the Blanket Order is intended to …
Continue reading “CSA Proposes Semi-Annual Financial Reporting Pilot for Eligible Venture Issuers”
New guidance from the offices of the Canadian Privacy Commissioner and the Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta Privacy Commissioners (collectively, the “Offices”) has been published through the recently released decision in PIPEDA Findings # 2025-003 (the “Finding”) with respect to the Offices’ expectations of organizations who are collecting, using, or disclosing personal data. While there …
Continue reading “TikTok’s Privacy Blunders: A Wake-Up Call for Business Owners”
A recent decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal is a good reminder that courts won’t bail you out just because a tax plan didn’t go as expected. In Pyxis Real Estate Equities Inc. v. Canada, 2025 ONCA 65, the Court made it clear: if your documents match the plan – even if that plan …
Continue reading “Tax Planning Misstep? Ontario Court of Appeal Says No to Rectification”
In the recently released decision of Ross v. Luypaert, 2025 ONCA 236, the Ontario Court of Appeal reaffirmed that a co-owner of real estate can compel the sale of jointly owned property under the Partition Act. The only exception is where the opposing party can prove that such an application amounts to malicious, vexatious, or …
Continue reading “The Partition Act: A Powerful Tool for Resolving Jointly Owned Property Disputes”
On March 12, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published its proposed new registration Interim Final Regulation (IFR).[1] It becomes effective on April 11, 2025. The IFR outlines the existing long-term regulations that provide that it is a legal requirement for all unregistered foreign nationals (or previously registered foreign nationals who turn 14 years …
Continue reading “Canadian B Visitors to the U.S.: What Does Registration Mean for You?”