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Top 10 Business Decisions
CO-WRITTEN BY AIDAN MACNAB, BERNISE CAROLINO
ANNAPOLIS GROUP INC. V. HALIFAX REGIONAL
MUNICIPALITY, 2022 SCC 36
• Annapolis Group Inc. > Lenczner Slaght
LLP > Peter H. Griffin, Scott Rollwagen,
Rebecca Jones, Amy Sherrard
• Halifax Regional Municipality > McInnes
Cooper > Michelle Awad, KC > Martin C.
Ward, KC > Jeremy G. Ryant
CLIENTS > FIRMS > LAWYERS
THROUGHOUT THE second half of the 20th
century, the Annapolis Group acquired 965
acres of land to develop and resell. In 2006,
Halifax Regional Municipality adopted a
planning strategy to guide land development
over 25 years. e strategy reserved some
of the Annapolis land for possible future
inclusion in a regional park and zoned the
Annapolis land as an urban settlement and
reserve. Halifax had to adopt an authorizing
resolution for the service development to
proceed on the Annapolis land.
Starting in 2007, Annapolis tried several
times to develop its land. In a 2016 resolution,
Halifax refused to initiate the planning process,
so Annapolis filed a claim for de facto expropri-
ation or constructive taking. e Nova Scotia
Court of Appeal dismissed the claim, but the
Supreme Court of Canada reversed the ruling.
Annapolis Group Inc. v. Halifax Regional
Municipality clarified the test for construc-
tive taking and held that a court's assessment
of the issue must accord with justice and fair-
ness, says Rebecca Jones, a partner at Lenczner
Slaght LLP.
"What that means in the context of these
claims is that the facts must be at the centre of
the test," she says. "e court should focus on
the effect of the public authority's actions on
the landowner, the advantages gained by the
public authority, and not on form.
"It's a substance-over-form analysis, which
the court has found that lower courts should be
advancing in assessing these cases."
Jones adds that the SCC also clari-
fied that the intention or purposes of the
public authority could be relevant in the
constructive-taking assessment.
