The prohibitively high cost of litigation is arguably one of the
main barriers to access to justice in Canada. As in many other
legal markets, the soaring cost of legal fees has created an
impediment to even well resourced parties bringing the most
meritorious of claims. "Litigation funding" or
"third-party funding" is a way of surmounting this
barrier. Litigation funding has become a well-established,
judicially recognized and commercially useful tool in the United
Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, but is a relatively
nascent phenomenon in Canada. While the first approval of a
private-funding arrangement in Canada occurred in 2009,1 the
Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) in 2020 has
commented that the jurisprudence in this area is still evolving.2
