Book Review: The Class Actions Controversy: The Origins and Development of the Ontario Class Proceedings Act By Suzanne Chiodo

• Author: Craig E Jones
• Pages: 379-381

379

BOOK REV IEW:

THE CLASS ACTIONS

CONTROVERSY: THE ORIGINS AND

DEVELOPMENT OF THE ONTARIO

CLASS PROCEEDINGS ACT

BY SUZANNE CHIODO

Craig E Jones, QC*

At the time of the Supreme Court of Canada’s notorious 1983 decision in

GM (Canada) v Naken,1 there was no mechanism by which a class action

could be conducted in the common law provinces of Canada, and the

Court’s reasons in that case indicated a suspicion, or at least deep uncer-

tainty, about the very idea. Les s than two decades l ater, that same Court

unanimously decla red in Western Canad ian Shopping Centres Inc v Dutton

that “the importance of the class action as a procedural tool in modern

litigation has become manifest,”2 to the point where even courts in prov-

inces which had not enacted class proceedings Acts should design their

own process for adjudicating mass claims. “The class action,” wrote the

Court in Dutton, “plays an important role in today’s world.”3

What brought about this reversal? Principally, the development and

implementation of a detailed and succes sful class action regime in On-

tario. By the time of t he Dutton decision, the class action had proven its elf

an effective device for regulat ion of risk and compensation of victims,

and it had done so without the negative effects warned of by the busi-

ness and manufacturing sectors which had opposed it. Indeed, one of

the great benef‌its of reading Suzanne Chiodo’s excellent history of the

Ontario Class Proceedings Act is its reminder that the class action was, at

one time, deeply controversial. And that the echoes of the debates dur-

ing its decades-long birth process are still embedded in the design of the

Canadian class action regimes.

* Craig E Jones, QC, is a b arrister and profess or of law at Thompson Rivers

University.

1 GM (Canada) v Naken, [1983] 1 SCR 72.

2 Western Canadian Sho pping Centres Inc v Dutton, 2001 SCC 46 at para 46.

3 Ibid at para 26.

CCAR 13-2.indb 379 10/30/2018 11:42:08 AM