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 Etobicoke
Eglinton Crosstown West Extension station works
Excavation at the Martin Grove, Kipling, Islington, and Royal York station sites drives full takings of some parcels and partial takings and temporary easements on many more. Owners fronting Eglinton Avenue West should be documenting access changes, parking loss, and revenue from the outset rather than reconstructing it later.
Business disruption during construction
Business loss is a recognised head of compensation, covering lost profits and goodwill attributable to the works. It is also the head that depends most heavily on records. A retailer who can produce clean monthly figures from before, during, and after construction is in a far stronger position than one relying on an impression that trade fell off.
Highway 427 and arterial works
Provincial and municipal road projects through Etobicoke take frontage from industrial and commercial sites, with the usual consequence of reduced truck access, lost loading area, and injurious affection to the remainder.
Worth knowing in Etobicoke
On a project this far along, the most valuable thing an affected business can do today costs nothing: start keeping contemporaneous records. Monthly revenue, foot traffic, delivery access, and photographs of the works. Business loss claims are won and lost on the quality of that evidence.
Who can expropriate in Etobicoke
- •Metrolinx
- •The City of Toronto
- •The Province of Ontario and the Ministry of Transportation
- •Hydro One and Toronto Hydro
What you are owed does not change by municipality
The Expropriations Act applies the same way in Etobicoke 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.