In a class action which the federal government says will cost up to $40 million, the Ontario trial court ruled last week that gays and lesbians whose partners died between 1985 and 1998 are entitled to survivor's benefits.
In 1998, the rule limiting survivor pensions to heterosexual surviving partners was eliminated as part of federal legislation enacted as a term of settlement of a suit brought by CLGRO (Coalition of Lesbians and Gays of Ontario) against more than 50 discriminatory federal laws. But at the time, the government limited the survivor pensions to queers whose partners died after 1998.
Last week's ruling held that the benefits should have been retroactive to 1985, the year that the equality rights section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into effect.
The federal government is expected to appeal, because the prospect of retroactively-effective equality challenges has potentially monumental impacts in many areas of the law.
Anyone who might be affected by the results in this case should contact J.J. Camp, Q.C., the lawyer who appeared on behalf of B.C. litigants.
The above documents are published in Adobe® Acrobat PDF format to allow for viewing across different computer platforms: Windows PC, MAC, Linux.
To view the documents you need to download and install Acrobat Reader, a free download from Adobe.
