Canada: 2025 Class Action Highlights

Access the full  Global class and collective actions: Recent trends and developments report.

In 2025, Canadian class action litigation evolved against a backdrop of procedural divergence between provinces. British Columbia continues to assert itself as the key battleground for new class claims, buoyed by a relatively more accessible certification test and a plaintiff-friendly no adverse costs regime, especially in areas like privacy and consumer claims. By contrast, Ontario’s 2020 reforms to its class proceedings legislation, which imposed additional superiority and predominance requirements to its test for certification that appear to be viewed as having raised the bar plaintiffs must meet at the gatekeeping stage. As a result, venue strategy has become a far more prevalent consideration than it was previously, leading to a noticeable shift of new filings away from Ontario and toward British Columbia and Québec.

Last year gave rise to a number of notable developments for the class actions bar, in several particular areas as detailed below.

Government-led mass tort claims

Legislatively enabled government-led healthcare costs—recovery actions continue to expand

Canadian governments have historically been unable to pursue mass tort claims to recover public healthcare costs under traditional common law principles, which vest tort claims in injured individuals and require individualized proof of liability and damages. Over the past two decades – and with increasing momentum in recent years – provincial legislatures have addressed these constraints through targeted legislation to create direct statutory causes of action to enable governments to directly recover healthcare costs from private companies alleged to have contributed to the harm leading to such costs. These statutes significantly reduce the evidentiary and procedural hurdles compared to regular common law tort claims.

This legislative model first emerged with tobacco cost-recovery statutes being enacted by various provinces beginning in 2000. Those statutes enabled governments to pursue aggregate claims based on population-level evidence, ultimately culminating in the 2025 CA$32.5 billion global settlement with major tobacco companies to resolve a bevy of healthcare recovery actions as well as class claims on behalf of individuals for personal injury damages. The settlement followed years of tobacco-related litigation, including a CA$15 billion trial judgment in Québec. The success of that legislative framework has since informed a new generation of plaintiff-friendly legislation designed to facilitate recovery for other public-health crises.

Most notably, provinces have enacted opioid healthcare recovery legislation that further expands the scope of potential liability beyond manufacturers to include distributors and other participants in the supply chain, relaxes causation requirements, permits market-share-based apportionment and applies retroactively. Pursuant to this regime, British Columbia commenced a national class action seeking tens of billions of dollars in opioid-related healthcare costs on behalf of the federal and provincial governments. In January 2025, the British Columbia Supreme Court certified the action, rejecting defence arguments that individualized differences among defendants defeated commonality and reaffirming the low threshold applicable at certification.

Building on these developments, provincial governments – particularly British Columbia – have continued to deploy this legislative template to new product categories. In late 2025, British Columbia enacted vaping-specific healthcare recovery legislation and promptly commenced proceedings against JUUL Labs, signaling an increasingly assertive posture toward public-health cost recovery through statute-enabled mass tort litigation.

These enactments have effectively created a general-purpose template for social-cost recovery arising from alleged product-based mass harm. While it remains uncertain which industries will be targeted next, several areas appear increasingly ripe for similar legislative intervention:

• Ultra-processed foods and high-sugar beverages, as governments increasingly link obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and certain cancers to systemic healthcare expenditures driven by diet-related risk factors.
• Fossil fuel producers, based on emerging public-health and climate literature framing heat-related mortality, wildfire-smoke respiratory illness and flooding-related injuries as healthcare costs attributable to upstream industry conduct.
• PFAS and other toxic chemical manufacturers, where regulatory scrutiny has intensified in response to studies linking exposure to cancer, immune suppression, endocrine disruption and developmental harm, and where governments have begun laying the groundwork for cost-recovery mechanisms.
• Social media platforms, which have emerged as a potential next frontier for healthcare cost recovery. In March 2024, the British Columbia government introduced Bill 12, the Public Health Accountability and Cost Recovery Act, aimed at enabling the province to recover healthcare costs associated with addiction, mental-health impacts and other harms allegedly driven by social media algorithms. Although the bill was paused in April 2024 in favour of negotiations with major platforms and the creation of an “Online Safety Action Table,” its introduction signals a clear willingness to extend the healthcare recovery model to digital harms and leaves open the prospect of future legislative action in this space.

Taken together, these developments indicate that government-led mass tort claims will only proliferate going forward as they have become an increasingly prominent tool for addressing alleged public-health harms through litigation. For defendants in regulated or consumer-facing industries, the evolving risk landscape now extends beyond regulatory compliance and private class actions to include the growing possibility of coordinated, legislatively enabled healthcare recovery proceedings pursued by provincial governments.

Government accountability for the consequences of innovation

Québec plaintiffs continue to benefit from the province’s low threshold for authorizing class actions to seek compensation for a wide array of harms. In June 2024, the Superior Court of Québec rendered an important class-action decision in Metellus v. Québec (Attorney General). In this decision, the Superior Court ordered the Government of Québec to pay CA$219 million in compensatory damages to thousands of the province’s taxi drivers for the de facto expropriation of the lost value of their taxi permits. These permits typically cost around CA$200,000, but their value had dropped below CA$150,000 following the introduction of a pilot program for the Uber ride-sharing app in 2016. The permit system was ultimately abolished by the government in 2019.

This decision is significant for provincial governments considering reform, such as deregulation, in industries responding to technological innovation. It may make governments more hesitant to allow new technologies that challenge existing regulatory frameworks or to reform these industries in response to such innovations. The provincial government has appealed Metellus, arguing that public programs already provided fair compensation, while the class of taxi drivers seeks an earlier valuation date that would lift overall compensation above CA$300 million. The appeal was heard in November 2025 and is now under advisement. Regardless of the outcome, in the future, this decision will undoubtedly influence how provincial governments calibrate compensation regimes when legislative change extinguishes valuable state-created economic positions.

Securities

Long-awaited guidance on the scope of continuous disclosure obligations

To close out 2025, the Supreme Court of Canada released its first securities class action decision in several years in Lundin Mining Corp. v. Markowich. The Court addressed what constitutes a “material change” triggering an issuer’s continuous disclosure obligations under the Ontario Securities Act, confirming that the analysis is fact-specific and purposive, and must be applied in light of the Act’s objective of reducing informational asymmetry between issuers and investors and protecting market integrity.

The case arose from pit-wall instability and a rockslide at Lundin’s flagship copper mine. The issue was whether these events amounted to a “material change” requiring prompt disclosure, or merely “material facts” subject to periodic disclosure. Lundin argued that because it remained a copper miner and continued operations, the events reflected only localized disruptions rather than changes to its business or operations. The motion judge accepted that position and denied leave to proceed. The Ontario Court of Appeal reversed, holding that the mine shutdown, revised mine plan and reduced production guidance could constitute changes to Lundin’s operations and that the investor had met the low statutory threshold for leave.

Writing for the majority, Justice Jamal upheld the Court of Appeal’s decision. The Court rejected the notion that a “material change” must be fundamental or transformational, holding instead that any alteration to an issuer’s business, operations or capital may qualify, with materiality serving to screen out trivial matters. The Court emphasized the functional distinction between “material facts” and “material changes”: the former describes a static state of affairs, while the latter involves a dynamic comparison of the issuer’s position before and after an internal development. On the record before it, the Court held that the operational consequences of the pit-wall instability, including altered mine phasing, reduced output, increased costs and reliance on lower-grade stockpiles, could constitute a material change requiring timely disclosure.

The Court also reaffirmed the leave standard under s. 138.8(1) of the Act, confirming that plaintiffs need only show a realistic chance of success based on a plausible statutory interpretation and some credible evidence, and that leave motions necessarily involve a limited weighing of the competing evidence. In dissent, Justice Côté cautioned that the majority’s approach risks collapsing the distinction between material facts and material changes, encouraging over-disclosure and increased regulatory burden.

The implications for future securities class actions are significant. By adopting a broad interpretation of what constitutes a “change” in the context of the continuous disclosure regime, the Court has made it more difficult for issuers to defeat claims at the leave stage based solely on the absence of a fundamental shift in business strategy or corporate identity. Discrete operational disruptions – such as asset-level shutdowns, production curtailments and/or cost increases – are now more likely to support timely-disclosure claims, shifting the battleground to materiality rather than threshold eligibility. Procedurally, Lundin Mining confirms that leave motions are merits screens, not mini-trials, lowering the practical barrier to entry for secondary-market class actions, particularly in resource-intensive industries where localized events can rapidly alter operational realities.

Privacy

Recent judgments indicate that some provincial courts are applying increased scrutiny to data breach claims, especially those caused by third-party actors

Over the past decade, privacy class actions in Canada have largely focused on mass data breaches caused by third-party hackers, with significant settlements achieved in cases involving companies such as LifeLabs and a major American web services provider and portal.

Until recently, many of these claims were anchored in the tort of intrusion upon seclusion, which allowed plaintiffs to establish liability and damages without proving actual harm. Beginning in 2022, however, appellate courts narrowed the scope of that tort. In Owsianik v. Equifax Canada Co., the Ontario Court of Appeal held that organizations whose systems are breached by external hackers cannot be liable for intrusion upon seclusion because the intrusion is committed by the third party, not the defendant. That reasoning was subsequently adopted by the Alberta Court of Appeal in Setoguchi v. Uber B.V.

British Columbia courts have signaled a somewhat different approach. In GD v. South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority  and Campbell v. Capital One Financial Corporation, the British Columbia Court of Appeal confirmed that organizations may still face liability under the statutory tort created by the province’s Privacy Act, even where a breach is caused by third-party actors. That approach was reflected in Hvitved v. Home Depot of Canada Inc., where the court certified only the statutory privacy claims and dismissed causes of action based on intrusion upon seclusion, breach of contract and unjust enrichment. The Court of Appeal further observed that, like intrusion upon seclusion, the Privacy Act may not require proof of actual harm, suggesting that data breach class actions may still proceed in British Columbia notwithstanding tightening standards elsewhere.

As traditional data breach claims face increased headwinds – particularly in Ontario and Alberta – plaintiffs have increasingly pivoted toward cases alleging misuse of personal information, often framed around the collection, use, or sharing of data beyond the scope of user consent.

The judicial response to these misuse claims has been mixed. Some courts have emphasized their gatekeeping role at certification and denied certification where misuse allegations were unsupported, speculative, or failed to demonstrate compensable harm. Others have taken a more permissive approach. In Situmorang v. Google LLC, the British Columbia Court of Appeal overturned a decision denying certification of claims alleging unauthorized use of facial recognition technology, holding that the motion judge had improperly characterized the pleadings and prematurely assessed the merits.

By contrast, in Cleaver v. The Cadillac Fairview Corporation Limited, the British Columbia Supreme Court refused to certify a proposed class action alleging the unauthorized collection of biometric data through facial recognition technology, finding that the plaintiffs failed to establish an identifiable class or a factual basis that the technology collected personal information in a manner engaging the Privacy Act.

Taken together, these decisions suggest that privacy class actions based on alleged data misuse remain in a state of flux. While courts appear increasingly skeptical of attempts to reframe ordinary data collection or analytics practices as actionable misconduct, they remain open – particularly at certification – to claims alleging clearly unauthorized secondary uses, systemic deception, or misuse tied to tangible economic or privacy interests.

Looking ahead, attempts to ground misuse claims in common law privacy torts may face resistance, particularly given the intent-based nature of those causes of action. Consistent with broader legislative trends seen in other mass harm contexts, meaningful expansion of liability for data misuse may depend more on statutory reform and regulatory enforcement than on common law development. As a result, plaintiffs are increasingly anchoring claims in express statutory regimes and consumer protection frameworks, while defendants continue to emphasize consent, contractual authorization and the absence of demonstrable harm.

Consumer protection

Legislative developments continue to reinforce the centrality of class actions in consumer disputes

Consumer protection continues to be a consistently active area for class actions in Canada, driven by statutory causes of action that are well suited to common issues and aggregate resolution. Claims alleging deceptive marketing practices, unfair business conduct and improper contractual terms remain a staple of the Canadian class actions landscape, particularly in sectors involving standardized consumer contracts and mass-market products or services.

In March 2025, British Columbia further strengthened the plaintiff-friendly nature of this regime through amendments to its consumer protection legislation rendering arbitration clauses in consumer contracts unenforceable. In doing so, British Columbia joined the majority of other provinces, including Ontario and Québec, that have already curtailed the use of mandatory arbitration to block consumer class proceedings. As a result, companies facing proposed consumer protection class actions in British Columbia can no longer rely on arbitration clauses as a threshold defence to certification, reinforcing the continued viability of class actions as the primary vehicle for resolving consumer disputes in the province.

Québec’s legislative developments

Québec’s legislature has again expanded the province’s plaintiff-friendly Consumer Protection Act  (CPA). Since 2023, the right to repair provided by section 39 of the CPA has extended to subsequent purchasers. On October 5, 2025, Québec’s Bill 29 significantly expanded the obligations of a merchant or manufacturer under section 39 to provide repair services, replacement parts, or the information necessary to repair or maintain a consumer good. Both the consumer and, now, a subsequent purchaser have the right to request these parts, services and information for a “reasonable time” after purchase and, if the merchant or manufacturer does not respond in writing within a specific timeframe, its obligation to provide a replacement product is automatically triggered.

The significance of these changes to class action litigation is yet to be determined. The new provisions allow merchants and manufacturers to opt out of providing these parts, services or information if they explicitly warn the consumer in writing before the product is sold. However, the exposure generated for those that decide not to opt out, or who do not do so properly, could be significant. The fact that more conduct now constitutes a violation of section 39, when combined with the fact that subsequent purchasers can seek reparation for these violations, could pave the way for more class action litigation on the basis of section 39.

A new enforcement regime for drip pricing at the federal level

The trend towards plaintiff-friendly legislation continues at a federal level. As of mid-2025, the federal Competition Act now permits private parties to bring applications to the Competition Tribunal for deceptive marketing practices, including when doing so is in the public interest. Furthermore, the Act specifically defines drip pricing as a sanctionable false or misleading representation. If timelines before the Tribunal prove faster than traditional class-action litigation before superior courts, this new avenue for private enforcement could influence forum selection when alleged drip pricing straddles both consumer protection and competition frameworks.

Although, unlike the CPA, the private enforcement mechanism in the Competition Act only allows for compensatory damages, going forward, businesses should nevertheless plan for parallel exposure: first, from claims alleging breaches of provincial consumer protection legislation advancing before the province’s superior court and, second, from competition claims pursued before the federal Tribunal.

Judicial developments in Québec’s consumer-friendly landscape

Québec has long been viewed as a favourable venue for plaintiffs seeking compensation for unfair business practices. This trend continued in April 2025 when, more than 10 years after the class action was first filed before the Superior Court, the Québec Court of Appeal rendered its decision in a consumer class action and ordered a national airline to pay CA$10 million in punitive damages for “drip-pricing”—a deceptive marketing practice that involves charging higher final prices at the end of a transaction than those initially displayed online, which is prohibited by paragraph 224(c) CPA.

Importantly, the Court of Appeal declined to award compensatory damages, as the plaintiffs failed to establish any quantifiable economic loss. However, it awarded substantial punitive damages to censure the airline’s serious negligence and disregard for consumers, manifested both in its unilateral determination that Québec’s Consumer Protection Act was constitutionally inapplicable and in its decision to persist in the prohibited practice for competitive reasons.

In early 2026, the Supreme Court of Canada granted leave to appeal the decision. Under the CPA, pursuant to paragraph 224(c), companies must always display all-in prices to the consumer. The Court of Appeal’s decision affirms the importance for the plaintiffs to demonstrate a concrete, tangible harm when seeking compensatory damages for a violation of this section. Furthermore, if the Court of Appeal’s decision is upheld by the Supreme Court, the punitive damages awarded in this decision might also reshape risk analysis for consumer-facing pricing and other CPA prohibited practices in Québec.

Judicial oversight of class action proceedings

The courts in Québec have taken note of the proliferation of class action proceedings in the province, and they have recently asserted their willingness to oversee counsel’s remuneration when approving settlement agreements. In MacDuff v. Sunwing, Sunwing Airlines had been advertising champagne on its flights when, in practice, it was serving sparkling wine. In 2023, the Superior Court held that this constituted false or misleading advertising under Québec’s Consumer Protection Act, but made half of the CA$1.5 million in plaintiffs’ counsel fees contingent on a certain threshold of class members actually claiming the award, which provided them with a 7% discount on their next purchase of certain flights and vacation packages.

In October of 2025, the Court of Appeal largely upheld this decision, modifying only the duration during which class members could claim their discount to eliminate years of uncertainty for counsel while waiting for the uptake threshold to be met. The unanimous Court expressed concern with the emergence of a class action industry in Québec and its significant draw on judicial resources. In particular, the Court was concerned with the nature and gravity of the harm being remedied. According to the Court of Appeal, the harm of serving sparkling wine instead of champagne during a flight is, “a priori negligible or practically non-existent.” Given the low uptake of class members in similar cases, the Court further called into question the deterrent effect of this type of award on the authors of the harm being remedied. This might signal a new era of scrutiny over the severity of the harm that consumer class action litigation seeks to address.

This appellate endorsement confirmed the trend of Québec courts to question the real value of the relief to plaintiffs and it affirmed their jurisdiction to make fee payouts contingent on measurable class engagement, particularly where coupons, credits or low‑friction digital benefits may result in low participation. For counsel, this result is likely to raise the cost of outreach efforts encouraging plaintiffs to redeem their reward and provide a means of questioning the real-world value of the negotiated settlement based on predicted uptake.

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