The Court Of Appeal Of Québec Clarifies The Analysis Of The Authorization Criteria For Class Actions

When a judge is seized of an application for authorization to bring a class action in Québec, must they analyze all of the legal grounds invoked by the plaintiff in support of a given claim, or is it sufficient that just one of those grounds is arguable? On February 13, 2026, the Court of Appeal provided important clarifications on this question in two decisions: Gauthier v. Bombardier Inc.¹ (Gauthier) and Option Consommateurs v. Home Depot of Canada Inc.²(Home Depot).

Pursuant to article 575(2) of the Code of Civil Procedure (C.C.P.), a class action may only be authorized if “the facts alleged appear to justify the conclusions sought / les faits allégués paraissent justifier les conclusions recherchées.” The interpretation and application of this criterion were at the heart of both appeals.

The Gauthier and Home Depot cases

In Gauthier, the plaintiff sought the authorization to bring a class action on behalf of a group of former Bombardier employees who had participated in a restricted stock unit plan. He alleged that Bombardier had improperly terminated their participation in the plan upon the transfer of certain Bombardier subsidiaries, thereby depriving them of the financial benefits to which they would otherwise have been entitled.

In Home Depot, the allegations concerned the disclosure of class members’ personal information — including hashed email addresses and purchase data — by Home Depot to a third-party social media platform, without their knowledge. This information was allegedly used to measure the effectiveness of advertisements placed on that platform.

Reading Gauthier and Home Depot together confirms that, where multiple legal grounds are invoked in support of the same claim, the authorizing judge's role is limited to verifying whether what is claimed — that is, the conclusions sought — appears justified on the basis of at least one of those grounds, and nothing further. Where that threshold is met, the authorizing judge should generally refrain from ruling on the remaining legal grounds or arguments advanced in support of the same claim.

The Court further specifies that the notion of "conclusions sought" must be understood as referring to the primary object of the claim or claims at issue. In both cases, that primary object was the payment of compensatory and punitive damages.

A nuanced approach

While these decisions propose a methodology that refocuses the analysis under article 575(2) of the C.C.P. on the conclusions sought rather than on each individual legal ground invoked, the Court is careful to clarify that they do not call into question a fundamental principle of class action law: the plaintiff continues to bear the burden of demonstrating the existence of an arguable cause of action against each defendant.

Furthermore, the Court acknowledges that this approach is not absolute. Although it should generally be favoured, the authorizing judge retains the discretionary authority to derogate from it. In particular, the Court refers to the possible existence of "exceptional circumstances" that may reveal compelling reasons — rooted in the guiding principles of civil procedure — justifying the exclusion of certain legal grounds or arguments at the authorization stage. The precise scope of this exception and the nature of such "exceptional circumstances" remain to be defined by future jurisprudence.

Practical implications for the parties

One thing is clear: if the methodology endorsed by the Court in Gauthier and Home Depot is followed, it will have the effect of deferring to the trial stage a significant portion of the debate concerning the appropriate legal grounds for the claims. While this approach may, in certain cases, simplify and streamline the authorization step, it risks, in others, giving rise to subsequent disputes regarding which grounds must ultimately be examined by the trial judge.

From a practical standpoint, this development also carries the risk of broadening the scope of the debate on the merits in class action proceedings, particularly with respect to the scope of pre-trial examinations and requests for document production. In this context, defendants would be well advised to adopt a proactive case management strategy following authorization. They may, in particular, seek to narrow the scope of the debate by requesting the intervention of the case management judge to identify and define the true issues in dispute. They may also request that the court take any other measure appropriate to ensure the orderly conduct of the proceedings — including, where warranted, measures to circumscribe the relevant evidence where the evolution of the file reveals that certain claims or legal grounds are unlikely to succeed.

Footnotes

1. 2026 QCCA 148. ↩

2. 2026 QCCA 149.↩