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 Renfrew
Highway 17 twinning, Arnprior to Renfrew
A 22.5 kilometre expansion between Scheel Drive and a point west of Bruce Street, with design procurement launched in February 2026. Twinning an existing highway takes frontage along the corridor and whole parcels where the new carriageway departs from the existing alignment.
Interchange and structure work
Interchange construction, of which the completed Calabogie Road structure is the pattern, takes substantially more land than the mainline does and needs approach grading and staging room well back from the highway.
County and utility works
Renfrew County road works, servicing and Hydro One corridors take frontage and register easements independently of the provincial project.
Worth knowing in Renfrew
The useful thing about a project at the design procurement stage is that the alignment is not yet fixed everywhere along it. An owner who engages early, while the designer is still resolving where the new carriageway sits and where the interchanges land, is in a materially better position than one who waits for the notice. That is not a compensation argument, it is a practical one, and it is the only stage at which the footprint over your particular property is genuinely still movable. Once the Notice of Expropriation is served, the 30-day section 10 election of your valuation date runs, and the argument shifts from where the highway goes to what it is worth.
Who can expropriate in Renfrew
- •The Province of Ontario and the Ministry of Transportation
- •The Town of Renfrew, the Town of Arnprior and the County of Renfrew
- •Hydro One
- •Mississippi Valley Conservation Authority
What you are owed does not change by municipality
The Expropriations Act applies the same way in Renfrew 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.