Canadian Lawyer

8 A P R I L 2 0 1 8 w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m community feed-in tariff program. The 10-page statute, in the works for more than seven years, creates a licens- ing and permitting system to oversee the development of marine renewable energy projects. Licences allow a project develop- er to carry out the business of extracting energy while permits enable devices to be tested or demonstrated. This is the main thrust of the legislation, Mahaney says. Permits for demonstration projects are the only real new opportunity created by the legislation, she adds. "This changes the current landscape." A cap of 10 megawatts has been set on the program. Already one application has been submit- ted to generate half this amount. Much of the legislation is not actual- ly new. In 2015, the province introduced the first iteration of the Marine Renew- able-energy Act, but it never came into force. Late last year, the government amended that legislation to include the demonstration permits. "We've been looking at this legislation for some time. Now, we wait and see how it plays out. It's early days," says Mahaney. Other provinces will likely be watch- ing closely what Nova Scotia has done to generate interest in this emerging sector while attempting to protect the environ- ment and acknowledge local needs. The territory is uncharted, notes Mahaney. "Other international jurisdictions, includ- ing Europe, are further ahead. We're in the early stages. Other provinces may look to Nova Scotia." Following the leader also brings with it legal benefits, she points out. "It's helpful to have as much jurisdictional consistency as possible." The legislative issue of renewable energy also got another jolt recently with the federal government's introduction of Bill C-69, An Act to enact the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act to amend the Navigation Protection Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts. The proposed statute, now moving through the legisla- tive process, sets out how the government will regulate offshore renewable energy projects in federal waters. This legislation will replace the Cana- dian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012 with the Impact Assessment Act, and expand the types of impacts studied to understand how a proposed project could affect the environment, health, society and the economy. — DONALEE MOULTON \ AT L A N T I C \ C E N T R A L \ W E S T REGIONAL WRAP-UP NS enacts country's first marine renewable energy legislation Continued from page 7 NEW CLASS ACTION PROCESS LAUNCHED IN MONTREAL C E N T R A L T he creation of a new class-action division in the Montreal judicial district that will be devoted to hearing all authorization demands is expected to both speed up and improve the management of cases by a select group of judges who are experi- enced and interested in that area of law. But it is also expected to change the way lawyers prepare and practise in the filtering phases of the highly popular civil lawsuits in a jurisdiction that is widely seen as class- action friendly. Announced by Superior Court of Quebec Chief Justice Jacques Fournier and co- ordinating Judge Pierre-C. Gagnon at a standing-room-only meeting organized by the Barreau du Québec's decade-old committee on class actions in the provincial regulator's offices next to the courthouse in downtown Montreal on Jan. 12, the new division will fea- ture a group of 10 judges who will collectively handle all class action filings as of Sept. 1. If and when filings are authorized, they will be reassigned to the other 63 Superior Court judges who work in Montreal for litigation management. In a presentation on the new group presented by Justice Gagnon and obtained by Canadian Lawyer, the justices list a series of motivating factors for introducing the new class action management framework. Chief among them is the increased workload related to class action suits in Quebec since the enactment of the new Code of Civil Procedure in 2016. According to the data provided by the justices, 65 new class actions were filed in Montreal in 2017, bringing the total number of active cases (including pre- and post- authorization and at the liquidation stage) to 338. Of those 338 cases, 155 are in the pre-authorization phase, 100 are in post-authoriza- tion, 16 are in appeal, 40 are in liquidation, 37 are suspended and 56 were orphaned. On average, the 73 Superior Court justices in Montreal handle four or five cases each. However, the varied nature and complexity of those cases, together with regular events among the justices such as retirements, nominations to the Court of Appeal of Quebec and special assignments, have resulted in some cases taking two years or more in the pre-authorization stage. Adding to the delays is the fact that the justices were dealing with these cases on judge days, which created work overloads, scheduling challenges and limited opportu- nities to hear from parties. Those delays in today's post-Jordan legal environment have drawn sharp criti- cism from other justices. Court of Appeal of Quebec Judge Marie-France Bich slammed the Superior Court of Quebec's handling of class action pre-authoriza- tion filings in a six-paragraph rebuke in paragraph 69-75 in the 2016 decision in Charles v. Boiron. To accelerate matters, the group of 10 judges in the new division will take all cases in which authorization has not been decided, which is estimated to be an annual average of 15 or 16 each. The other group of 63 judges will then manage litigation in one or two authorized cases a year. "The goal is to streamline the process and point cases to judges who are most com- fortable with class actions," says Jean Saint-Onge, senior counsel with Borden Ladner Gervais LLP and moderator of the January meeting.

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