Canada: Class Actions

A Quebec Superior Court has authorized a class action examining whether professional contact information collected by business intelligence platform Apollo.io falls within Quebec privacy law's "professional information" exception. The case raises critical questions about the boundaries between protected personal data and exempted professional information in today's digital workplace, particularly regarding cell phone numbers, LinkedIn profiles, and algorithmic profiling outputs.

On June 26, 2026, the Government of Ontario and Warwick (Rick) Brown, the court-appointed representative plaintiff in the Ontario Training Schools class action lawsuit, jointly announced that a $60 million settlement agreement had been approved by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. The class action settles claims arising from historic neglect, deprivation, abuse, and solitary confinement suffered by individual harm while residing at 13 specific Ontario Training Schools between 1953 and 1984, on behalf of all individuals who qualify; thus, all qualifying induvial are automatically considered “Class Members”.

The Ontario Superior Court's recent decision in Yee v. Telus International marks a significant shift in how Canadian courts handle parallel securities class actions, refusing to stay proceedings despite substantially similar claims in British Columbia. This ruling suggests that well-resourced corporate defendants may face increasing difficulty consolidating duplicative litigation, particularly when TSX-listed companies are involved, raising important questions about fairness, efficiency, and the burden of d