Bill No. 169 - Expropriation Act. - Third Reading

 CLAUDIA CHENDER « » : Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to rise and say a few words about Bill No. 169, the Expropriation Act. As we have been discussing in this Chamber regarding this bill, and as we heard at the Law Amendments committee, expropriation is a very serious step. How matters of expropriation are dealt with can have a very significant impact on individuals and also on governments and expropriation authorities.

 The stated purpose of this bill is to allow people whose land has been expropriated to receive reasonable compensation for their loss. In my experience, Mr. Speaker, the stated purpose of every bill put forward lately is slightly different than the actual text of those bills. In this case, the notion of reasonableness, I would submit, needs to apply to both parties, the expropriating authority and the expropriated individual. It also needs to include an understanding of the role that differential access to justice can play in this process, including access to costs.

 One of the changes made through these amendments is to shift decision-making from the URB to the Supreme Court where the matter involves injurious affection. We heard two really different perspectives on that change in venue at the Law Amendments committee. Mr. Speaker, I confess that I have continued to hear very differing opinions on this from presenters at the Law Amendments committee, but I haven't heard a really compelling case for why that change of venue needs to occur. If that case exists, I'm confident that the minister will restate it, but at the moment we remain somewhat unconvinced.

 The board has developed respected expertise in expropriation compensation, including injurious affection, and the courts are not necessarily going to improve upon this in terms of their expertise. In any event, Mr. Speaker, our courts are very busy, and we often hear complaints about inappropriate delay.

 As I mentioned previously when were debating this bill, there is a long-held tradition that anyone whose land is expropriated or harmed and is found to have a valid action around that expropriation doesn't go out of pocket even if they contest the offered price. Thus costs are awarded for all reasonable cases on a full recovery basis, based on the court's assessment of what reasonable costs are. It's not an inflated fee that may have somehow occurred. There are checks and balances on it, yet for the broad majority of cases, Mr. Speaker, full costs are in fact recovered.

What we heard at the Law Amendments committee that was troubling, particularly in terms of access to justice, is that we have now seen a shift to the court cost system, where those costs, as opposed to being determined based on the reasonableness of the bill, are now determined based on tariffs and the Civil Procedure Rules. My understanding is that costs awarded under those tariffs are never full costs and are more often 30 per cent to 50 per cent of the actual cost.

I submit that that would create a barrier to someone who wanted to challenge a decision going forward with that. As we know, entering the court system is an expensive proposition. If you meet with an expert or you meet with a lawyer, and you're told that you have a very good case and that maybe in this case the expropriating authority has made a mistake in their assessment, and you feel confident to go on, you can do that. It's obviously still a gamble, but you know that if you are successful you will not be significantly out of pocket.

That is no longer the case. That is worrisome, particularly as this change came in not with this bill but as a result of a change in the regulations, about which I can confidently say that no one in our caucus was - I don't think anyone was aware of before we heard the presentation at the Law Amendments committee.

On the whole, while I confess that there is still some lack of clarity around the operation of this bill, we have heard enough concerns at Law Amendments and throughout the debate of this bill to have serious reservations around the provisions to which I just spoke.