Alberta Court Of Appeal Clarifies The Test For Summary Judgment

Summary judgment can be an effective tool to resolve litigation in a cost-effective way. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Hryniak v. Mauldin 2014 SCC that a "culture shift" toward simpler procedures was necessary and expanded the scope of summary judgment. Subsequently, courts across Canada, including in Alberta, grappled with the expanded scope of the summary judgment test (see for example, previous blog posts here, here, and here), in some cases leading to confusion about how the new summary judgment framework was to be applied. In the recent Stoney Tribal Council v. Canadian Pacific Railway, 2017 ABCA 432 ("Stoney"), the majority of the Alberta Court of Appeal stripped away some of the additional gloss which had been put on the summary judgment framework, including by the Alberta Court of Appeal itself.