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 Vaughan
Highway 413 eastern terminus
The corridor runs 52 kilometres from Highway 401 in Halton to Highway 400 in Vaughan, with roughly 400 acres crossing Greenbelt land in the north of the city. The Province identified approximately 500 properties for acquisition in its 2025 budget, the corridor was designated under the Public Transportation and Highway Improvement Act on November 27, 2025, and the final Environmental Impact Assessment Report was published on March 12, 2026.
Yonge North Subway Extension
Station sites, launch shafts, and emergency exit structures along the alignment produce full takings of smaller parcels and partial takings with working easements on neighbouring land.
York Region road and servicing works
Regional road widenings and water and wastewater servicing take frontage and register easements across properties that are not otherwise in the path of a headline project.
Worth knowing in Vaughan
Highway 413 land is being acquired under the Public Transportation and Highway Improvement Act, and that changes the procedure in two ways owners need to know. First, there is no hearing of necessity: the COVID-19 Economic Recovery Act, 2020 abolished that right for expropriations under the PTHIA, so there is no 30-day window to challenge whether the taking should happen and no inquiry to wait for. The Minister 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. Second, Bill 212, the Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act, 2024, bars a registered owner from applying under the Expropriations Act to adjust the date of possession for land expropriated by the Minister for a priority highway project. Neither change touches your compensation. Market value, injurious affection, 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.
Who can expropriate in Vaughan
- •The Province of Ontario and the Ministry of Transportation
- •Metrolinx
- •The City of Vaughan and the Regional Municipality of York
- •Hydro One and Alectra
- •The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority
What you are owed does not change by municipality
The Expropriations Act applies the same way in Vaughan 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.
Served in Vaughan? Here is how to get advice.
The first conversation is free and confidential. I act for property owners and businesses across York Region and throughout Ontario, and I handle every file personally.
General legal information about Ontario expropriation law, not legal advice. Reading this page does not create a solicitor and client relationship.