CASUAL LEGAL: Land and Property Rights Tribunal Facts Sheet

Land and Property Rights Tribunal Facts Sheet

By Greg Weber

Reynolds Mirth Richards Farmer LLP

AMSC Casual Legal Service Provider

An amalgamation of the Land Compensation Board, Municipal Government Board, New Home Buyer Protection Board, and the Surface Rights Board into a single new Land and Property Rights Tribunal occurred on June 2, 2021.

The Tribunal is established under the Land and Property Rights Tribunal Act.

The Expropriation Act has now been amended to reflect the transition to the Tribunal, but there no changes to parties’ substantive rights and obligations.

The Government of Alberta released a “Land and Property Rights Tribunal fact sheet” on March 23, 2021. It provides useful information for understanding how things will look moving forward with regard to expropriation. Here are two highlights from the fact sheet:

• The Tribunal will have common rules of procedure. These have not been announced yet, but this will likely change the way expropriation hearings are conducted. Currently, expropriation proceedings closely follow the Rules of Court for many of the key stages of the litigation process, resulting in rigorous process designed to provide more extensive procedural protections. It is not clear how this will work given the diverse subjects that the Tribunal will have jurisdiction over and the wide variance in procedure that currently exists. This could result in a less rigorous process for expropriations, or perhaps a more rigorous process for other areas.

• The Tribunal will have a single chair who will select panels from the entire pool of Tribunal members. The justification for this is to ensure that “the best and most experienced members” will be selected for a panel. It is unclear how this change will ensure that outcome, given the fact that the previous Boards were highly specialized and would not be expected to bring greater expertise to areas of jurisdiction for which they were not initially appointed. This could very well increase the risk and uncertainty in expropriation proceedings which is a more specialized area and often involves substantial sums of money.

In the meantime, the contact information, addresses and phone numbers for the predecessor boards remain intact. Stay tuned for further changes as they are announced.