You have 30 days to choose your valuation date.
When the authority serves the Notice of Expropriation it also serves a Notice of Election. Under section 10 you have 30 days to return it and choose which date your land is valued at: the date you were served with the notice of hearing, where a hearing of necessity was held, the date the expropriation plan was registered, or the date the Notice of Expropriation was served on you. Miss the 30 days and you are deemed to have elected the registration date, whether or not that is the one that favours you.
Note which document starts this clock. It is the Notice of Expropriation, served within 30 days after the plan is registered, which happens only after the taking has been approved under section 8. It is not the Notice of Application for Approval to Expropriate you may have received months earlier. That earlier notice starts a different 30-day clock, for the hearing of necessity, and the two are commonly confused in both directions: owners who think they have already dealt with the election, and owners who think they have blown a deadline that has not started.
When do you have to be out? Once the authority serves a Notice of Possession, section 39(2) requires the date for possession to be at least three monthsafter that notice is served. Either side may apply to a judge under section 39(3) to move the date earlier or later, and in practice authorities are frequently willing to agree to an adjustment on residential moves without a motion. It is usually the first question a homeowner actually wants answered.
In a flat market the choice is academic. In a rising one, or where the project itself has been depressing values along the corridor for years, the gap between those dates can be substantial, and it is the whole of your market value claim that moves with it. This is the deadline most owners have never heard of, and unlike the challenge to the taking, it applies to every expropriation.
And the hearing of necessity, which may not exist for you
For an ordinary municipal or regional taking, a road widening or a conservation authority acquisition, you have 30 days from service of the Notice of Application to request a hearing of necessity: an inquiry into whether the taking is fair, sound, and reasonably necessary in the achievement of the objectives of the expropriating authority. Since June 2021 it is heard by a member of the Ontario Land Tribunal rather than by an inquiry officer, and the report is not binding on the approving authority, so it rarely stops a taking outright. Its practical value is forcing the authority to justify the scope on the record.
For many of the largest projects, that right has been abolished. The Building Transit Faster Act, 2020 removes it for expropriations on transit corridor land for a priority transit project, which covers the Ontario Line, the Scarborough Subway Extension, the Yonge North Subway Extension, and the Eglinton Crosstown West Extension. The COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act, 2020 removes it for expropriations under the Public Transportation and Highway Improvement Act, which is how provincial highways including Highway 413 are being acquired. The Transit-Oriented Communities Act, 2020 does the same for transit-oriented community land, which is what applies to many station-area takings in Toronto. Where a utility expropriates with Ontario Energy Board authorisation, there is no hearing of necessity either; the owner's forum is the OEB proceeding itself.
If you are on one of those projects, do not wait for a hearing that is not coming. Your compensation rights are untouched, and the section 10 election above still runs.
But do not assume there is no way to be heard at all. Section 45 of the Building Transit Faster Act and section 11.2 of the Public Transportation and Highway Improvement Act each allow the Minister to establish a process for receiving owner comments in place of a hearing. Where such a process exists on your project, it is the only input you get, and missing its window forfeits it. Find out early whether one has been established.
Take the section 25 payment. It settles nothing.
Within three months of registering the expropriation plan, and before taking possession, the authority must serve a written offer with an appraisal report. Section 25 of the Expropriations Act requires that offer to include immediate payment of 100 per cent of the market value the authority itself estimates for your land. The Act says that payment and receipt of that sum is without prejudice to your rights.
In practice that means you can bank the money and keep arguing. Owners routinely leave six figures sitting with the authority for a year because they assume taking it would be treated as acceptance. It is not. The document to be careful about is a full and final release, which is a different thing entirely and should never be signed without advice.
The land they take may be only part of your compensation claim.
Compensation under the Act is not a land price. It has several heads, and on a partial taking the land itself is frequently the least of them.
Injurious affection (where part of your land is taken)
The drop in value of the land you keep, caused by the taking of the rest or by the works built on it. A widening that severs a lot, removes eleven parking spaces, or kills a curb cut can hurt the remainder far more than the strip was worth. This is the head most often thin or absent in an authority's appraisal. Note that this is only one of the Act's two limbs; the other is below, and it has its own deadline.
Disturbance damages
Costs you actually incur that market value does not capture: moving, storage, mortgage prepayment penalties on a forced discharge, engineering and professional fees, and the reasonable cost of re-establishing somewhere comparable. These are recoverable to the extent you can document them, so keep every receipt from today forward.
Business loss
If you operate on the property, lost profits during and after relocation, the cost of re-establishing, and goodwill attributable to the move. These claims live or die on financial records and usually need a business valuator alongside the land appraiser. On commercial files this is often the largest number and the one least developed.
Interest, and the residential allowance
Section 33, which opens "Subject to subsection 25(4)", currently carries interest at 6 per cent per year on the market value and injurious affection portions, running from the date you cease to reside on or make productive use of the land. Bill 245 amended section 33 to replace the fixed 6 per cent with a prescribed rate; that amendment is not yet in force, so 6 per cent is the rate today, but check it rather than assuming. It does not run on disturbance damages, and the Tribunal may allow up to 12 per cent where the authority caused the delay. That cross-reference is a positive reason to take the section 25 money rather than merely a costless one: leaving it uncollected can cost you interest.
If the land taken was your home, section 18(1)(a)(i) adds an allowance of 5 per cent of the market value of the residential part for the inconvenience and cost of finding another residence, provided the land was not being offered for sale on the date of expropriation. Section 18(1)(a)(ii) adds a further allowance for improvements not reflected in market value. Section 18(1)(b) is a separate allowance, for the cost of finding replacement premises where the premises taken did notinclude the owner's residence, again provided the land was not being offered for sale, and section 18(1)(c) covers relocation costs including moving, legal and survey costs.
Tenants are dealt with separately. Section 18(1) pays disturbance to "an owner other than a tenant", so the 5 per cent allowance is not a tenant's entitlement. A tenant occupying expropriated land is compensated under section 18(2), which pays so much of those same costs as is appropriate having regard to the length of the term, how much of it remains, any right or reasonable prospect of renewal, the nature of the business, and the extent of the tenant's investment in the land. It is a real entitlement, but it is apportioned rather than fixed.
They are not taking your land, but the work next door is ruining it.
This is the limb of the Act almost nobody knows exists, and far more people are affected by it than are ever expropriated. Under section 1(1)(b), an owner whose land is not taken at all can still claim injurious affection for damage caused by the construction or use of the works. If you live or run a business beside the Highway 413 corridor, an Ontario Line site, or the Eglinton West tunnelling works, this is your claim, not the one above.
Section 22 imposes an absolute one-year deadline. The claim must be made in writing with particulars within one year after the damage was sustained or after it became known, and if it is not, the right is "forever barred." There is no approval, no notice of application, no expropriation plan and no letter from anyone. Nothing arrives to tell you the clock is running, and unlike the deadlines above, this one can expire before you have any idea you had a claim.
Be aware that the test on this limb is much narrower than on a partial taking. The damage must flow from the construction rather than the use of the works, it must be damage that would be actionable but for the statutory authority to carry out the work, and the reasonableness analysis set out by the Supreme Court in Antrim Truck Centre Ltd. v. Ontario (Transportation), 2013 SCC 13, asks whether it is reasonable to expect you to bear that interference without compensation in the public interest. Serious and prolonged interference with a business is very different from ordinary construction nuisance, and the distinction is where these claims are won and lost.
If nearby construction has cost you access, parking, customers, or the use of your property, the date to work out is when the damage was sustained or became known. That is the only date that matters, and it is already running.
In most outcomes, the authority pays for your lawyer and your appraiser.
This is the provision almost no owner has heard of, and it changes the entire calculation. Under section 32, where the Ontario Land Tribunal awards you 85 per cent or more of the amount the authority offered, it must order the authority to pay your reasonable legal, appraisal, and other costs actually incurred in determining compensation.
Note the threshold: you do not have to beat the offer outright, only to come within 15 per cent of it. The legislature wrote it that way because you did not choose this fight.
One important qualification, and any lawyer who leaves it out is selling you something. In Shergar Development Inc. v. Windsor (City), the Court of Appeal held that "the amount offered" in section 32 is not limited to the section 25 offer. Later settlement offers count too. So an authority that improves its offer during the proceeding raises the bar you have to clear, and if you fall below 85 per cent of that later offer, costs become discretionary under section 32(2) and can be ordered against you. In Shergar itself the owner was ordered to pay the city's costs.
The practical position is still strongly favourable, but it is conditional rather than automatic, and how offers are handled through the proceeding is a large part of what you are retaining counsel to manage.
What this looks like in numbers.
An illustration, using a partial taking from a commercial lot for a road widening. The figures are invented to show how the heads of compensation stack, not drawn from any file.
| Head of compensation | Authority's offer | Documented claim |
|---|---|---|
| Market value of the strip taken | $340,000 | $395,000 |
| Injurious affection to the remainder (11 parking spaces lost) | nil | $210,000 |
| Disturbance (re-layout, resurfacing, signage, engineering) | nil | $48,000 |
| Business loss during construction | nil | $60,000 |
| Total | $340,000 | $713,000 |
Now apply section 32. On the section 25 offer alone the threshold is 85 per cent of $340,000, which is $289,000, and the owner clears that on the market value head by itself. But that is not where the threshold stays. Per Shergar, "the amount offered" includes later settlement offers, so if the authority improves to $600,000 during the proceeding the bar moves to $510,000, and an award of $480,000 that looked like a win against the original offer now puts costs in the Tribunal's discretion under section 32(2), and possibly against the owner.
So the asymmetry is real but it is not a free option. Costs are the reasonable costs actually incurred, routinely reduced on assessment, and since Bill 245 section 32(3) directs that assessment against the applicable tariffs or the Tribunal's rules. The owner also fronts the appraiser and waits years to be reimbursed. Strongly favourable, conditional, and not automatic is the accurate summary, and how offers are handled through the proceeding is a large part of what counsel is managing.
Illustration only. These are not real figures, not a quote, and not a prediction of any result. Every property, taking, and market is different, and compensation depends entirely on the evidence in your particular case.
When you should not call me.
Some situations are not worth a lawyer's involvement, and you should hear that before you spend anything.
- •You have already signed a full and final release. Once you have released the authority, the room to move is usually gone. There are exceptions, but they are narrow.
- •Your dispute is with a private neighbour, not an authority. Boundary, easement, and access fights between private owners are ordinary civil litigation, not expropriation. Different statute, different process. See civil litigation.
- •You want someone to stop the project. Expropriation law is built around compensating you properly, not around preventing public works. A lawyer promising to stop a transit line is selling you something.
Questions owners ask
What should I do first after receiving a Notice of Application for Approval to Expropriate?
Write down the date you were served, because one 30-day clock runs from it: your right under section 6(2) to request a hearing of necessity. That is the only deadline the Notice of Application starts. The other 30-day deadline people confuse it with, the section 10 election of your valuation date, does not run yet. It runs from service of the Notice of Expropriation, a separate document served within 30 days after the expropriation plan is registered, which itself only happens after the taking is approved under section 8. Those two documents can be months or the better part of a year apart, so do not treat the election as handled and do not assume you have missed it. Then stop signing things. Authorities often present a purchase agreement or a release alongside the notice, and signing before the statutory process begins can forgo protections that only attach once it does. Gather your deed, survey, mortgage statement, and any recent appraisal, and get advice while the 30 days for the hearing of necessity are still running.
How long do I have to challenge an expropriation in Ontario?
For an ordinary municipal or regional taking, 30 days from service of the Notice of Application to request a hearing of necessity. For several of the largest projects there is no such right at all: the Building Transit Faster Act, 2020 removed it for priority transit projects on transit corridor land, which covers the Ontario Line, the Scarborough Subway Extension, the Yonge North Subway Extension and the Eglinton Crosstown West Extension, and the COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act, 2020 removed it for expropriations under the Public Transportation and Highway Improvement Act, which is how Highway 413 land is being taken. Where the right does not exist, your compensation claim is entirely unaffected and is where the value is.
Should I accept the money the expropriating authority offers?
You should generally take the section 25 payment, because accepting it settles nothing. Section 25 of the Expropriations Act requires the authority to offer immediate payment of 100 per cent of the market value it estimates for your land, and the Act provides that payment and receipt of that sum is without prejudice to your rights. It does not waive any argument, does not close your file, and does not stop you from negotiating or going to the Ontario Land Tribunal for the balance. What you should not do is sign a full and final release in exchange for it.
Who pays for my lawyer and appraiser in an Ontario expropriation?
In most outcomes the expropriating authority does. Under section 32 of the Expropriations Act, where the Ontario Land Tribunal awards you 85 per cent or more of the amount the authority offered, the Tribunal must order the authority to pay your reasonable legal, appraisal, and other costs actually incurred in determining compensation. You do not have to beat the offer outright, only to come within 15 per cent of it. One qualification matters: in Shergar Development Inc. v. Windsor (City) the Court of Appeal held that the amount offered is not limited to the section 25 offer, so a later settlement offer from the authority raises the bar. Fall below 85 per cent of that later offer and costs become discretionary under section 32(2) and can be ordered against you. The position is strongly favourable but conditional, not automatic.
Is the first offer usually fair?
The first offer is a starting position prepared by an appraiser the authority retained and pays. It typically values the land taken within a defensible range while treating the rest of the claim thinly. Injurious affection to the land you keep and disturbance damages are the heads most often understated or left out, and on a partial taking those are frequently worth more than the strip of land itself. That is a difference in scope rather than bad faith, and it is why an independent appraisal matters.
What can I claim beyond the value of the land taken?
Injurious affection, disturbance damages, business loss, interest, and in some cases a residential allowance. Injurious affection is the drop in value of the land you keep. Disturbance damages are real costs you incur, including moving, storage, mortgage prepayment penalties, professional fees, and re-establishment. Business loss covers lost profits and goodwill if you operate on the property. Interest runs at 6 per cent per year under section 33 on the market value and injurious affection portions, from the date you cease to reside on or make productive use of the land. If the land taken was your home, section 18(1)(a)(i) adds an allowance of 5 per cent of the market value of the residential part for the inconvenience and cost of finding another residence, provided the land was not being offered for sale on the date of expropriation, and section 18(1)(a)(ii) adds an allowance for improvements not reflected in market value. Tenants are dealt with separately: section 18(1) pays disturbance to an owner other than a tenant, so the 5 per cent allowance is not a tenant's entitlement. A tenant occupying expropriated land is compensated under section 18(2), which pays so much of those costs as is appropriate having regard to the length of the term, the portion remaining, any right or reasonable prospect of renewal, the nature of the business, and the extent of the tenant's investment. Section 18(1)(b) covers the cost of finding replacement premises where the premises taken did not include the owner's residence, and section 18(1)(c) covers relocation costs. Business loss is normally not determined until the business has operated six months at its new location, or three years pass, so it is expressly carved out of the section 25 offer.
They are not taking my land, but nearby construction is damaging my property. Can I claim?
Possibly, and there is a one-year deadline that nothing will warn you about. The Expropriations Act has a second limb of injurious affection, in section 1(1)(b), for an owner whose land is not taken at all but who is damaged by the construction or use of the works. Neighbours of the Highway 413 corridor, Ontario Line sites and Eglinton West works are the typical claimants. Section 22 requires the claim to be made in writing with particulars within one year after the damage was sustained or after it became known, failing which the right is forever barred. No approval, notice or plan is served on you, so nothing tells you the clock is running. The test is narrower than on a partial taking: the damage must flow from the construction rather than the use of the works, must be actionable but for the statutory authority, and is assessed against the reasonableness analysis in Antrim Truck Centre Ltd. v. Ontario (Transportation), 2013 SCC 13. Serious and prolonged interference with a business is a very different case from ordinary construction nuisance.
When do I have to move out?
Not before the date in the Notice of Possession. Under section 39(2) that date must be at least three months after the notice of possession is served on you. Either you or the authority may apply to a judge under section 39(3) to adjust it, and in practice authorities are frequently willing to agree to a change on residential files where the owner is co-operating and has a reason, such as a school year or a closing date on a replacement home. Ask early rather than assuming the date is fixed, and do not vacate before you have to, because the date you cease to reside on the property is when section 33 interest starts running.
Metrolinx or the city offered to buy my property before any notice. Is that an expropriation?
Not yet, and the difference is worth real money. Authorities routinely try to negotiate a purchase before starting the statutory process, and an agreement reached at that stage is a voluntary sale rather than an expropriation. Selling then can forgo the protections that attach only once the Expropriations Act process begins, including the section 32 costs rule, which can shift your appraisal and legal costs onto the authority once a compensation claim is determined. Have the offer reviewed before you sign it, not after.
How long does the whole process take?
A negotiated settlement commonly takes a few months to a year after the expropriation plan is registered. A hearing of necessity, where one is still available and you request it, usually adds three to six months, though for Highway 413 and the priority transit projects that step no longer exists. If compensation is disputed and referred to the Ontario Land Tribunal, expect commonly two to four years and sometimes considerably longer, given current scheduling; Shergar itself ran twenty-two years. The section 25 payment remains available to you throughout, so the timeline does not leave you without funds while the balance is worked out.
Does the Special Economic Zones Act affect my expropriation rights?
It may, and it is an unsettled area that is actively moving. The Special Economic Zones Act, 2025, enacted by Bill 5, lets the province designate zones and projects and disapply provincial requirements to them. Bill 5 also carries provisions denying compensation and extinguishing causes of action in connection with designated projects, including language to the effect that nothing done constitutes an expropriation or injurious affection for the purposes of the Expropriations Act. Bill 5 has several schedules and the precise home of each of those provisions should be confirmed against the current consolidation before anyone relies on it. Bill 5 is under constitutional challenge: Ecojustice filed on April 8, 2026 on behalf of Wildlands League, Environmental Defence, Friends of the Earth and Democracy Watch, on delegation and constitutional architecture grounds, and there is separate earlier First Nations litigation. If your land is near a designated zone or project, get current advice rather than assuming ordinary compensation rules will apply.
Go deeper
If you have been served.
The first conversation is free and confidential, and it is often enough to tell you whether there is anything worth pursuing. I act for property owners and businesses across Toronto, the GTA, and Ontario, and I handle every file personally.
This page is general legal information about Ontario expropriation law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create a solicitor and client relationship.