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 St. Catharines
QEW Garden City Skyway twinning
A new QEW bridge over the Welland Canal connecting St. Catharines to Niagara-on-the-Lake. Approach works take frontage and whole parcels back from the canal and register substantial temporary staging easements on land beside the alignment.
QEW corridor and interchange works
Ministry widening and interchange work along the QEW through Niagara takes strips from properties already backing onto the corridor, which raises injurious affection rather than market value as the main issue.
Regional road, servicing and utility works
Niagara Region road widenings, water and wastewater servicing, and Hydro One corridors take frontage and register permanent easements independently of the provincial projects.
Worth knowing in St. Catharines
Land for a provincial highway is acquired under the Public Transportation and Highway Improvement Act, and that removes one right owners usually have. The COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act, 2020 abolished the hearing of necessity for PTHIA expropriations, so there is no 30-day window to argue that the taking should not happen and no inquiry to wait for. The Ministry may instead establish a process for receiving owner comments, and it is worth finding out what that process is for this corridor and putting submissions into it rather than assuming there is nothing to respond to. None of this touches compensation. Market value at highest and best use, injurious affection to what you keep, disturbance damages, business loss, interest and section 32 costs all apply in full, and the section 10 election of your valuation date still runs 30 days from service of the Notice of Expropriation. Temporary construction easements deserve particular attention on a bridge approach, because they last longer here than the word temporary suggests. An easement that sterilises a yard, a parking area or a field for several construction seasons is a real and compensable loss, and it should be valued over its actual duration rather than treated as a nuisance.
Who can expropriate in St. Catharines
- •The Province of Ontario and the Ministry of Transportation
- •The Regional Municipality of Niagara and the City of St. Catharines
- •Hydro One
- •Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority
- •The St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation
What you are owed does not change by municipality
The Expropriations Act applies the same way in St. Catharines 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.