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 Ottawa
LRT Stage 2 and the Highway 417 expansion
The Stage 2 alignment requires the expropriation of property interests along the corridor, and the project is tied to the Highway 417 expansion. Where a rail corridor and a provincial highway widening run together, a single property can be affected by two authorities under two statutes at once.
Stage 3 and the Barrhaven extension
The Barrhaven alignment put roughly 120 homes at risk of expropriation before council revised the route to run elevated in the median of Woodroffe Avenue through a 600 metre pinch point. Route revisions of that kind move which properties are affected, so advice given on an earlier alignment can be out of date.
Federal capital land and interprovincial works
Bridge, precinct and capital works take land under federal authority, following the federal Expropriation Act rather than Ontario's. The notice periods, the hearing process and the costs regime are all different.
Worth knowing in Ottawa
Establish the statute before you respond to anything. A City of Ottawa taking for LRT is an ordinary Expropriations Act expropriation: you have 30 days from the Notice of Application to request a hearing of necessity, 30 days from the Notice of Expropriation to elect your valuation date, and section 32 costs at the end. A Ministry taking for the Highway 417 widening runs under the PTHIA, where the COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act, 2020 removed the hearing of necessity entirely, though compensation and the valuation-date election survive. A federal taking runs under a different Act again, with its own timelines. Three notices that look similar can carry three different sets of rights, and assuming the wrong one forfeits deadlines that cannot be recovered.
Who can expropriate in Ottawa
- •The City of Ottawa
- •The Province of Ontario and the Ministry of Transportation
- •The Government of Canada, the National Capital Commission and Public Services and Procurement Canada
- •Hydro One and Hydro Ottawa
- •Rideau Valley Conservation Authority
What you are owed does not change by municipality
The Expropriations Act applies the same way in Ottawa 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.