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Administrative - Stays. Prairies Tubulars (2015) Inc v. Canada (Border Services Agency)
In Prairies Tubulars (2015) Inc v. Canada (Border Services Agency) (Fed CA, 2022) the Federal Court of Appeal upheld the denial of a stay on administrative proceedings while a criminal investigation took place:[4] More particularly, the CITT noted that extraordinary circumstances are required for civil proceedings to be stayed because of concurrent criminal proceedings. As observed by the Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench in Bank of Nova Scotia v. Diamond-T Cattle Co., 1992 CanLII 8067 (SK QB), [1993] 2 WWR 722, 106 Sask R 142:[8] However, in the case of only an investigation it will invariably be more difficult for a party to demonstrate a valid basis upon which to justify the granting of a stay. The most obvious problem is that there is no certainty that criminal charges will ever be brought and absent same it usually will be impossible to find potential for injustice. At the same time it would be unfair to postpone indefinitely a determination of the civil dispute. Equally, absent criminal charges, there will be difficulty in showing an interrelationship between the pending civil proceedings and the potential criminal proceedings. [5] Here, the criminal proceedings are at the investigation stage and, as observed by the CITT, no charges have been laid against the applicants. And even if charges were to be laid, we do not know how related they would be to the proceedings before the CITT.
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