Motion to Be Heard Within Sixty Days - Section 137.2(2)

• Author: David A. Potts; Erin Stoik
• Pages: 412-417

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Motion to Be Heard Within Sixty Days—Section 137.2(2)

LEGISLATION

Courts of Justice Act, RSO 1990, c C.43, s 137.2(2):

Motion to be heard within 60 days

137.2 (2) A motion under section 137.1 shall be heard no later than 60 days after

notice of the motion is f‌iled with the court.

British Columbia had an opportunity to review the Ontario legislation and

prepared a dif‌ferent version. Section 9(3) of the Protection of Public Participa-

tion Act, SBC 2019, c 3, provides:

9 (3) An application for a dismissal order under section 4 must be heard as

soon as practicable.

Justice Donegan of the Supreme Court of British Columbia discussed the

genesis of this section in her very comprehensive decision on costs in Hobbs

v Warner, 2020 BCSC 1180 at paras 83–97:

[83] Subsection 9(3) of the PPPA provides:

An application for a dismissal order under section 4 must be heard as

soon as practicable.

[84] Similarly, s. 10 provides:

An appeal of a dismissal order under this Act to the Court of Appeal

must be heard as soon as practicable.

[85] The legislation does not def‌ine this phrase, so I must turn to the

modern approach to statutory interpretation to determine its meaning. As set

out in Rizzo & Rizzo Shoes Ltd. (Re), 1998 CanLII 837 (SCC), [1998] 1 SCR 27 at

para.21, the phrase “as soon as practicable” must be read “in its entire context