What if you and the defendant both live in Ottawa but work in Gatineau. While at work (in Gatineau), the defendant sends a defamatory email saying bad things about you. Since you both live in Ottawa, you sue in Ontario. But the tort took place in Quebec? Quebec law applies. But how does the Ontario court apply Quebec law in an Ontario case? Quebec law is supposed to be ‘different’ from Ontario law. (It isn’t, but we are all supposed to pretend that it is). Likewise Corbett J. explain how ‘different’ Quebec law was, but funny enough he then proceeded to apply Ontario law to the case as though Ontario and Quebec law were the same.
What Corbett J. actually did in Abramovitz v. Lee, was apply the old rule of ‘lex fori’ (law of the place you are now) established by the Supreme Court of Canada in Mclean v. Pettigrew [1945] S.C.R. 62. This ‘lex fori’ was supposedly overturned by the Supreme Court in 1994 (Tolofson) in favour of requiring the Ontario court to apply Quebec law (‘lex loci’ the law where the wrong occurred).
That was a mistake by the Supreme Court, (because it is too hard to apply ‘foreign’ law). But no one likes to admit mistakes, so we pretend it was not a mistake by just ignoring Tolofson and quietly (without admitting it) going back to the sensible old rule of ‘lexi fori’ (applying Ontario law even though the tort occurred in Quebec). That is, in effect, what Corbett J. did in Abramovitz.
