Coates & Waqué, New Law of Expropriation©, (Carswell), is written by the members (and one former member, who has now retired) of Borden Ladner Gervais' expropriation law group. It is the leading Canadian text about the law of expropriation: that is, the law surrounding the taking of land from individuals and corporations by the government. The various branches of government take land for many reasons, from the widening of roads to the construction of projects such as water and sewage plants or Ontario's new 407 highway. Usually, government representatives try to negotiate with a landowner before the power to forcibly take land is exercised.

The information contained in the text will be especially important to you if you are a government authority thinking of acquiring land or if you have been approached by a government authority and want to understand more about your rights and options.

Set out below are extracts from the text, which provide an overview of expropriation law generally and a sampling of its contents.

Introduction

The basic objective of this text was to allow practitioners in every province to have the benefit of the law hammered out in the heat of litigation in other jurisdictions. Perhaps this might lead to greater certainty in the law in each jurisdiction and thus produce a greater propensity toward satisfactory settlement. However, the danger of a larger body of case law, apparently covering most situations, is that a rigidity will creep into the law of expropriation. To avoid this, the uniqueness of each particular fact situation and the reform spirit of the new Expropriation Act must continue to be highlighted when cases are presented.

How to Use This Publication - The Tabs on Each Act

There is an index to the text which will prove useful in many instances, but each practitioner, whether lawyer, appraiser, accountant or other expert, must start by reading through ... the act of the jurisdiction which applies. In most cases each section of the statute is preceded by a descriptive heading taken, where available, from the marginal notes in the official printing of the legislation. While these notes do not have legal effect as part of the legislation itself and are occasionally misleading as to the section's effect, they were adopted for the benefit of consistency.

When a relevant section is identified by this overview, the cases which bear on the section will be found discussed under various headings and subheadings. A review of the headings and subheadings should direct the reader further to the discussion most relevant to his or her problem. Related sections in other reform acts are described in a heading or subheading usually entitled "Other Jurisdictions". By referring to the tabs on other jurisdictions and locating the particular section number given, the reader can have access to the law of other jurisdictions which might bear on his concerns. The relevance of the case law of other jurisdictions will depend on how closely these sections of the other act or acts are related to the act of the jurisdiction in question. The reader will be impressed, after a short time, with how often the acts parallel each other.

Reference should be made to the heading numbers found in this publication. They have no significance in themselves except for allowing a shorthand reference to the particular subheadings with which they are identified.

The Tab on Evidence

The tab on Evidence is distinctive in that it is not organized under sections of an Expropriation Act. The tab on Evidence was created for two reasons. First, cases on topics of evidence decided under the Ontario Act had multiplied to such an extent that it was no longer convenient to discuss them under particular sections of that Act. Second, the authors desired to provide to the less experienced practitioners an overview on the preparation of a case for arbitration. An understanding of the Ontario Act, particularly section 14 (market value) and section 21 (injurious affection) is not complete without a review of the Evidence tab. In other jurisdictions evidentiary problems are covered, to the extent the cases available allowed, usually in the discussion under the sections on market value and injurious affection.

As this work evolves it is expected that more extra-Ontario cases will find their way into the material on Evidence, and discussion of evidentiary issues in the tabs on other acts will decrease. For the present, appraisers in Alberta, for example, who wish to learn what factors for adjusting comparable sales will be appreciated by the Alberta Land Compensation Board, as a second step, appraisers ought not only to refer to the discussions under related sections of other acts described in '6.0 of Alberta section 41, but they ought also to review the tab on Evidence, particularly '8.03.00 of that tab. For one unfamiliar with evidentiary problems in this field, the first reference should always be to the tab on Evidence no matter what act governs the problem at hand, so that the issues can be seen in context. Finally, it must affirmed that this publication is only a starting point for research; nothing will substitute for careful reading of the relevant cases themselves.

List of Appraisers

Appendix A to the Evidence tab is a simple listing of appraisers who have appeared regularly as expert witnesses. The use that might be made of the list is explained at the beginning of that appendix.