International Arbitration 2018 - Canada Chapter

Julie Rosenthal, Brad Halfin and Tamryn Jacobson co-authored the Canada chapter of Global Legal Insights’ International Arbitration 2018, 4th edition.

Excerpt:

Under the Canadian Constitution, the administration of justice falls within the jurisdiction of the provinces. Accordingly, each province has enacted its own legislation governing arbitrations. In addition, the federal government has enacted legislation which governs arbitrations involving a department of the federal government, a Crown corporation, or raising issues of maritime or admiralty law.

With one exception, each province has enacted two arbitration statutes: one that governs international commercial arbitrations, and one that governs all other arbitrations. 2 Thus, for example, the province of Ontario has enacted the Arbitration Act, 1991, which governs domestic arbitrations, and the International Commercial Arbitration Act, 2017 governing international commercial arbitrations.

Virtually all of the provinces (except Quebec) have incorporated the UNCITRAL 1985 Model Law into their respective statutes. For example, in British Columbia, the International Commercial Arbitration Act 5 largely replicates the provisions of the 1985 Model Law. And recently, Ontario became the fi rst jurisdiction in Canada to amend its international commercial arbitration legislation to refl ect the changes made to the Model Law in 2006. The International Commercial Arbitration Act, 2017 provides that the Model Law “has force of law in Ontario”, albeit subject to certain exceptions and modifications as set out in the Act.

For ease of reference, this chapter will focus on the law governing international arbitrations in Ontario and British Columbia.

Click here to read the full chapter.