Did you know that the statutes of limitations that we have today have existed in some form since the sixteenth century?
There was a Limitations Act, 1623 that became part of the law of Upper Canada in 1792. Thereafter, the Real Property Limitations Act, 1874 and Trustee Act, 1888 were copied into Ontario statutes along with many other English statutes of limitations.
The Ontario Limitations Act, 2002 that we have today was the product of decades of legal reform. In 1969, the Ontario Law Reform Commission published a Report on the Limitation of Actions (which report has a table that compares the English statutes with the Ontario statutes at that time). In 1977, the Attorney General released a discussion paper with a draft bill that was largely borrowed from the 1969 report. In 1991, a consultation group produced a paper to the Attorney General with recommendations for a new act. At that time, the length for the ultimate limitation period was recommended to be thirty years, and in exceptional cases, ten years. See York Condominium Corp No 382 v Jay-M Holdings Ltd., 2007 ONCA 49.
Fast forward from the 1960s to 2002, the Limitations Act, 2002 was finally given royal assent on December 9, 2002 after a number of Bills. Thereafter, the Act that we have today came into force on January 1, 2004.
So why do we have limitation periods, and why do we spend so much time talking about them?
Limitation periods are statutes of repose, M. (K.) v. (M.) (H.), [1992] 3 SCR 6 (SCC). They are “Acts of Peace” that lay claims to rest and there are three important policy reasons for them:
- Certainty, as there comes a time when a potential defendant should be secure in his reasonable expectation that he/she will not be held to account for ancient obligations.
- Evidentiary, as there is desire in our justice system to foreclose claims based on stale evidence after memories, witnesses, and corroborative evidence are lost with time.
- Due diligence, as plaintiffs are expected to act diligently and not “sleep” on their rights”. Limitation periods are meant to incentivize plaintiffs to deal with their claims in a timely fashion.
Despite decades (and perhaps centuries) of scholarship, limitation periods are difficult to apply in each and every instance. It can be highly contentious given the seriousness of its import to either side of the equation, and there is new caselaw each year on the subject. Leibel v. Leibel, 2014 ONSC 4516, on limitation periods for will challenges, was only a 2014 decision. Armitage v. Salvation Army, 2016 ONCA 971, and Wall v. Shaw, 2018 ONCA 929, on limitation periods with respect to passings of accounts, were also relatively recent decisions.
I suppose since time never stops, neither will our laws on time.
Thanks for reading!