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This article first appeared in French in the summer 2019 edition of the periodical Carrefour of the Quebec Corporation of chartered municipal officers (COMAQ).

Over the last few years, Quebec’s Access to Information Commission (“AIC”) has rendered several decisions on the concept of “municipal archives”, a term which is found in legislation pertaining to municipalities, particularly pursuant to access to information requests for the contents of bids received following a public call for tenders.

On June 20, 2019, the Labour standards, equity, and health and safety Board (Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail, the “CNESST”) and the Human Rights Commission, (Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse, the “CDPDJ ”) issued a press release to the public announcing that a collaboration agreement (the “Agreement”) had been concluded between them.

Construction professionals are often asked by the project owner for their analysis of a claim made by the general contractor at the end of the project. At issue are delays, impacts, the price of changes, or the refusal to issue change orders. Professionals are generally reluctant to perform such analyses because of their confidential nature and the fear that they might be used against them. Also, it is often the case that the project owner does not want to share this analysis with the general contractor. This, however, can be a useful step in negotiating a settlement with the contractor. In a judgment rendered in late December 2018 that has received relatively little attention, the Quebec Court of Appeal reassured the parties regarding the confidential nature of such an analysis.

Quebec’s Minister of Labour, Mr. Jean Boulet, recently announced his intention to launch a wide-ranging workshop aimed at the modernization of the entirety of the province’s occupational health and safety regime.

Beginning this fall, numerous aspects of Quebec’s laws on prevention and indemnification of workers will be overhauled. This is promising news, as several processes, particularly for challenging decisions of the CNESST, the government insurer for Quebec workers and employers, are cumbersome and definitely in need of revision.

This past year has marked a peak in interest and scrutiny into the well-being of the democratic process around the world, with a particular focus on online activities and messages. In this context and with the October 2019 general election in sight, the Canadian Government sped the Elections Modernization Act (also known as Bill C-76) through parliament. This overhauled version of the Canada Elections Act, which came fully into force on June 13, 2019, created a wide range of new obligations, affecting both online and offline activities and communications.

In its June 2019 decision in Lacour v. Construction D.M. Turcotte T.R.O. Inc., the Quebec Court of Appeal appears to have revised the state of the law on prescription (limitation of actions) by deciding that in the case of a latent defect that manifests itself gradually over time, the property owner can wait several years before commissioning an expert’s report, and only upon learning the report’s conclusions does the three-year prescription period begin to run. In other words, the starting point for extinctive prescription of a right of action for a contractual fault is the moment when the property owner receives the expert’s report.