Practice Direction No. 8

Submitting Documents

Amendment Notice:

Effective September 4, 2019, the Practice Direction No. 8 issued on May 6, 2013 is revoked and replaced by the Practice Direction No. 8 found below.

  1. This Practice Direction amends and augments subrule 17(2) of the Specific Claims Tribunal Rules of Practice and Procedure, SOR/2011-119:

17 (2) A document must be filed in PDF (Portable Document Format) or any other electronic format that allows the document to be converted for printing on letter size paper.

  1. All documents must be filed in PDF in an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) format. This includes the table of contents.
  2. All documents submitted to the Specific Claims Tribunal (Tribunal) must contain a cover page including the style of cause, file number, title of document and volume number, if any.

Table of Contents

  1. When a document includes a table of contents, the table of contents must be hyperlinked and bookmarked to facilitate navigation within the electronic document. 
  2. If a document is separated into multiple volumes, each volume must have its own table of contents. In addition, parties shall separately file a table of contents listing the contents of all volumes. 

Books of Documents

  1. The Common Book of Documents shall be filed electronically. A paper copy is not required. The Common Book of Documents may be entered into evidence at a hearing in electronic form. 
  2. Parties shall jointly or separately file a Condensed Book of Documents for expert and submissions hearings. 
  3. The Condensed Book of Documents shall contain the following:
    1. for an expert hearing: all documents expressly cited in the expert reports; and,
    2. for a submissions hearing: all documents referred to in the memoranda of fact and law, and/or any other documents counsel considers essential to the case.
  4. Any handwritten documents contained within the Condensed Book must be transcribed.
  5. The Condensed Book of Documents and the Common Book of Documents must be filed 15 days prior to a hearing. A request to shorten the deadline for filing shall be directed to the Tribunal and shall state the reason for the request in writing.  

Providing Copies of Documents at Hearings

  1. At any hearing, in addition to the electronic version filed with the Tribunal, the parties shall provide one paper copy of any document containing 30 pages or more on which they will be relying on (e.g., Condensed Book(s) of Documents, Book(s) of Authorities and  expert reports). The Common Book of Documents is excepted from this rule. 
  2. All paper copies provided at a hearing shall be identical to the previously-filed electronic version. 

Submitting Exhibits at the Hearing

  1. All exhibits shall be provided in both electronic and paper format.
  2. Parties shall provide three paper copies of any documents they intend to enter as exhibits (for example, enlargements, maps to be marked). 
  3. If the exhibit was not filed before a hearing, the Parties shall file the electronic version after the hearing, except when it has been marked by a witness.

Honourable Harry Slade, Chairperson
Specific Claims Tribunal