This page is legal information, not legal advice. It describes the law in general terms and cannot account for the facts of your situation. Reading it does not create a lawyer and client relationship. For advice you can act on, speak with a lawyer about your own matter.
What is taking land in Dryden
Waasigan Transmission Line, northwestern segment
The corridor runs west from Thunder Bay to Atikokan and northwest toward Dryden. Hydro One applied to the Ontario Energy Board in November 2024 for authority to expropriate easements on 31 parcels between Shuniah and Atikokan, and had reached voluntary agreements with 18 owners by April 2025.
Regional transmission and distribution corridors
Connection works and distribution upgrades across the Kenora District proceed by easement across private, patented and resource land.
Highway and municipal works
Highway 17 corridor work and municipal servicing take frontage and register easements independently of the transmission projects.
Worth knowing in Dryden
An owner asked to sign a voluntary easement agreement is being asked to settle a permanent restriction, usually at a figure built around construction-period disruption. Those are not the same thing. Once the easement is registered you keep the title and the taxes and lose the ability to build, plant, drain or store across the strip for as long as the line stands, and on a rural or resource parcel the effect on what you keep can exceed the value of the strip itself. There is no obligation to sign the first agreement offered, and an owner who negotiates the easement terms, not just the price, generally does better than one who negotiates the price alone.
Who can expropriate in Dryden
- •Hydro One, with expropriation authority granted through the Ontario Energy Board
- •The Province of Ontario and the Ministry of Transportation
- •The City of Dryden and neighbouring municipalities
- •The Government of Canada, on federal lands
What you are owed does not change by municipality
The Expropriations Act applies the same way in Dryden as anywhere else in Ontario. What differs is which authority is taking the land and what the works do to what you keep.
- •Market value of the land taken, assessed without regard to any change in value caused by the scheme of the expropriation itself.
- •Injurious affection, the drop in value of the land you keep. On partial takings this is frequently worth more than the strip taken.
- •Injurious affection where no land is taken, under section 1(1)(b), for owners damaged by the construction of the works, and not their use, even though nothing of theirs is expropriated. Section 22 bars this claim absolutely unless it is made in writing with particulars within one year of the damage being sustained or becoming known, and nothing is served on you to warn you the clock is running.
- •Disturbance damages, the real costs you incur: moving, storage, mortgage prepayment penalties, professional fees, re-establishment.
- •Business loss, if you operate on the property, including lost profits and goodwill attributable to the works.
- •Interest at 6% per year under section 33 on the market value and injurious affection portions, running from when you cease to reside on or make productive use of the land, and where the land taken was your home, a 5% allowance on the market value of the residential part under section 18(1)(a)(i), provided the land was not being offered for sale on the date of expropriation. That allowance is payable to an owner other than a tenant; a tenant is compensated for disturbance under section 18(2) instead, apportioned by the length of the term and the tenant's investment.
Under section 32, if the Ontario Land Tribunal awards you 85% or more of the amount the authority offered, the authority pays your reasonable legal and appraisal costs, and you do not have to beat the offer outright to get there. The qualification worth knowing is that the Court of Appeal held in Shergar that "the amount offered" includes later settlement offers, not just the section 25 offer, so an improved offer raises the bar and falling below it puts costs in the Tribunal's discretion. Favourable, but conditional.
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General legal information about Ontario expropriation law, not legal advice. Reading this page does not create a solicitor and client relationship.