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 Newmarket
Provincial highway works and the Bradford Bypass corridor
Highway and interchange work in northern York Region takes frontage and whole parcels along the alignment. Properties near a corridor may be affected by the construction without any land being taken, which is a different claim with its own one-year deadline.
Barrie GO corridor expansion
Rail corridor widening, grade separations and station works take land from adjoining properties and register construction easements on neighbouring land.
Regional servicing and transmission easements
Water, sewer and transmission corridors proceed largely by easement, leaving you with title but without the ability to build or plant across the strip.
Worth knowing in Newmarket
The Bradford Bypass is being advanced under the Public Transportation and Highway Improvement Act, and the COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act, 2020 removed the hearing of necessity for expropriations under that Act. There is therefore no inquiry into whether the taking is fair, sound and reasonably necessary. The Minister may instead establish a process for receiving owner comments, and it is worth finding out whether one exists for this corridor. None of that affects compensation, and the 30-day valuation-date election still runs.
Who can expropriate in Newmarket
- •The Province of Ontario and the Ministry of Transportation
- •Metrolinx and GO Transit
- •The Regional Municipality of York
- •The Town of Newmarket
- •Hydro One
- •Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority
What you are owed does not change by municipality
The Expropriations Act applies the same way in Newmarket 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.