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 Greenstone
Ring of Fire transmission line
A roughly 230 kilometre line into the Ring of Fire region, declared a priority project and accelerated by the Province. Transmission corridors are acquired by easement, which leaves title with the owner and removes the use of the strip permanently.
Ring of Fire access roads
The road build was pulled forward by up to five years, with construction from June 2026 and first openings targeted for November 2030. Road corridors take land outright where they cross private holdings.
Regional highway, rail and servicing works
Highway 11 and 17 corridor work, rail servicing and municipal infrastructure across the northwest take frontage and register easements on their own timelines.
Worth knowing in Greenstone
Two things matter more here than anywhere else in the province. First, establish what kind of land you actually hold. Crown land, land subject to a mining claim, patented land and land within a First Nation's traditional territory are all governed differently, and only some of it engages Ontario's Expropriations Act. Second, on northern land the temptation is to value the acreage and stop. Resource potential, timber, access, and what the corridor does to the usability of what you keep are all part of full compensation, and an easement across a remote parcel can devalue far more of it than the strip it occupies. Where an owner does hold private title in the path of these corridors, the ordinary rights apply in full: the 30-day section 10 valuation-date election, injurious affection, disturbance damages, and section 32 costs.
Who can expropriate in Greenstone
- •The Province of Ontario and the Ministry of Transportation
- •Hydro One and transmission proponents, with authority through the Ontario Energy Board
- •The Municipality of Greenstone 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 Greenstone 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.