Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Scope of permissible examinations on discovery is narrowed by the federal Crown’s right under section 7 of the Crown Liability Regulations to designate a single representative of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA/ARC).
• Interrogatories previously conducted of CRA employees Calandriello and Ehramdjian are rendered irrelevant and unusable once the personal claims against them are declared abusive and dismissed.
• The plaintiff contests exclusion of these transcripts as a tactical limitation on what the CRA must disclose, alleging procedural manoeuvring and delay by the Crown.
• Judicial discretion and proportionality in civil procedure drive the Court’s management of pre-trial objections, limiting the objections debate to the examination of the designated representative, Ms. Soucy.
• Crown liability rules on designation of a representative interact with the plaintiff’s right to full discovery, including the potential—if the first representative proves unsatisfactory—to seek examination of an additional Crown representative.
• No monetary relief is decided in this management judgment; costs are reserved (“frais de justice à suivre”), so no total amount of damages or costs can presently be determined.

Factual background and procedural history

The case arises from an action in civil liability filed by Michael Gagnon against the Canada Revenue Agency (Agence du revenu du Canada, ARC) and three of its employees—Johanne Soucy, Michael Calandriello and Levon Ehramdjian—personally. The initial originating application, dated 19 January 2023, is framed as an extracontractual liability claim in which Mr. Gagnon alleges that the ARC and its agents committed wrongful acts causing him damage. The factual matrix includes a dispute about how the ARC treated or qualified Mr. Gagnon’s securities trading activities for tax purposes. Mr. Gagnon alleges the existence of a verbal agreement in September 2021 concerning the tax characterization of his securities activities, an issue that the Attorney General of Canada (on behalf of the ARC) maintains falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Tax Court of Canada. That jurisdictional point is underscored by the fact that Mr. Gagnon himself seized the Tax Court with the qualification issue in January 2022. In February 2023, the Attorney General of Canada (Procureur général du Canada, PGC) advised the plaintiff that his recourse against the individual ARC agents personally should be amended to remove those agents as defendants, as well as the conclusions directed specifically against them. Despite this warning, the individual employees remained personally named for some time, which later becomes central to the Court’s assessment of abuse and the status of their depositions. Before the pre-trial examinations, the defendants informed Mr. Gagnon that they no longer intended to pursue a previously announced motion to dismiss. On 10 and 11 October 2023, the three ARC employees—Soucy, Calandriello and Ehramdjian—were examined after defence, in their then-capacity as personal defendants. Numerous objections were raised by defence counsel during these examinations, leading to the need for judicial management of the objections. On 23 January 2025, the parties appeared before Justice Bienvenu to argue the objections. Instead of deciding them, and with the parties’ agreement, the judge opted to treat the appearance as a case management hearing. Finding the original originating application vague and ambiguous—especially as to whether the claim was contractual or extracontractual—Justice Bienvenu ordered the plaintiff to clarify both the factual and legal elements alleged against the defendants. Mr. Gagnon sought leave to appeal that management decision, but the Court of Appeal, per Justice Hogue, dismissed the motion on 23 April 2025. The plaintiff then served a further amended originating application on 16 June 2025. In the Attorney General’s view, this amended pleading added argument but did not provide precise factual allegations or adequately comply with Justice Bienvenu’s directions. The defendants responded on 27 June 2025 with a motion to dismiss. The plaintiff in turn filed a case management notice on 24 July 2025, arguing that the defendants were foreclosed from bringing such a motion because they had earlier renounced their intention to seek dismissal, and alleging that the dismissal motion itself was abusive. On 9 January 2026, Justice Yiannakis allowed the 27 June 2025 motion to dismiss as against the three individual employees, rejecting the amended originating application with respect to Soucy, Calandriello and Ehramdjian and authorizing the plaintiff to amend once more so that all conclusions would thereafter be directed solely against the ARC. In the same judgment, Justice Yiannakis rejected the plaintiff’s earlier case management notice. This finding—that the personal recourse against the employees was abusive—sets the stage for the management ruling now under review.

The evolving dispute over examinations and objections

Following the Yiannakis dismissal, the case proceeded on the basis that only the federal Crown, through the ARC, remained as defendant. On 31 March 2026, at a further hearing, the ARC—having unsuccessfully sought a stay of proceedings—invoked section 7 of the Crown Liability and Proceedings (Provincial Court) Regulations (Règlement sur la responsabilité civile de l’État et le contentieux administratif (tribunaux provinciaux)). Relying on this provision, the ARC asserted that, in an extracontractual claim against the federal Crown, only one representative of the ARC may be examined on discovery, and that this examination must be confined to the factual allegations in the (now) operative June 2025 originating application regarding the conduct of CRA employees acting in the course of their duties. The ARC designated Ms. Johanne Soucy as its representative for this purpose. The Attorney General then asked the Court to exclude the stenographic notes of the earlier examinations of Mr. Calandriello and Mr. Ehramdjian and to limit any further objections debate to the examination of Ms. Soucy alone. In a 12 February 2026 email to the plaintiff, the Attorney General had summarized this position, arguing that: (1) the federal Crown’s statutory regime permits the designation of a single person to be examined; (2) that person’s examination should be confined to the ARC’s allegedly abusive, bad faith, or grossly negligent conduct as pleaded in the re-amended originating application of June 2025; (3) the alleged 2021 verbal agreement on securities trading falls within the Tax Court’s exclusive jurisdiction; and (4) because the prior examinations of the three employees focused mainly on that alleged agreement, continuing to argue objections and production requests tied to those transcripts would be pointless, irrelevant, and contrary to the guiding principles of civil procedure. For reasons of proportionality and efficiency, the Attorney General proposed that the existing transcript of Ms. Soucy’s 11 October 2023 examination be preserved and used (rather than starting a new examination), while the transcripts of the other two employees’ examinations would be excluded from the judicial record for purposes of objections and further pre-trial proceedings. The plaintiff vigorously opposed this. He characterized the Crown’s move as a procedural manoeuvre designed to limit what the ARC might ultimately have to disclose and argued that it would be unfair to allow the Attorney General to “go back” on having allowed those examinations to occur, especially after having once renounced an earlier dismissal motion. From the plaintiff’s perspective, excluding the interrogatories of Messrs. Calandriello and Ehramdjian would unduly restrict his ability to rely on admissions or information already obtained, and would reward what he viewed as dilatory and tactical behaviour by the Crown.

Applicable legal framework on Crown representative examinations

The Court’s analysis centres on section 7 of the Crown Liability and Proceedings (Provincial Court) Regulations and section 3 of the Crown Liability and Proceedings Act (Loi sur la responsabilité civile de l’État et le contentieux administratif). These provisions create a particular regime for actions in liability against the federal Crown when they are brought before provincial courts. Under this regime, longstanding case law confirms that the Attorney General enjoys a discretionary power to designate the Crown’s representative for examination, and that the courts must show deference to this choice. The Superior Court reiterates this principle by citing, among others, Sarrazin c. Attorney General of Canada, where it was held that the Federal Crown may select its representative and that judicial interference is warranted only if the chosen person is “demonstrably unsatisfactory” because they are uninformed or incapable of becoming informed. Case law also emphasizes that the different treatment of the Crown, compared to private litigants, is justified by its public role, the need to protect the broader public interest in litigation, and the potentially wide-ranging implications of discovery testimony given by government representatives. In practice, the representative may not possess personal knowledge of all issues but is expected to inform themselves by reviewing documents and, when necessary, by giving undertakings to make further inquiries. Other decisions, including Québec and federal authorities, affirm that nothing in the Act or its regulations absolutely precludes the possibility of examining more than one Crown representative. However, they typically condition such additional examinations on a showing that the designated representative cannot, even after appropriate verification, provide the necessary information. Some cases hold that multiple representatives are warranted in complex matters involving several departments or agencies; others caution that additional examinations should be ordered only where the Crown’s choice has proved unsatisfactory. The Superior Court also refers to jurisprudence stressing that the interests of justice favour a meaningful and complete opportunity for pre-trial examination, while balancing proportionality and efficiency in civil procedure. Ontario authority (such as Campbell Drug Stores Ltd. v. Attorney General of Canada) is invoked to underline that the test must remain flexible enough to ensure a fair and meaningful discovery process.

Court’s analysis on exclusion of prior interrogatories

Against this legal backdrop, Justice Rigaud reasons that Justice Yiannakis’s earlier conclusion—that the recourse against Ms. Soucy, Mr. Calandriello and Mr. Ehramdjian, in their personal capacities, was abusive—has concrete procedural consequences. Because the examinations of the three employees were conducted when they were personal defendants, the Court finds that the interrogatories of Calandriello and Ehramdjian cannot be used in the ongoing proceedings now directed solely against the ARC. Once the personal claims are dismissed as abusive, the Court considers any debate over objections arising from those personal-capacity examinations to be moot. The only remaining defendant is the ARC, and under section 7 of the Regulations the Crown is entitled to designate a single representative—here, Ms. Soucy—for examination in its stead. The two other employees were examined not as the Crown’s designated representative but as personal defendants in a claim later declared abusive. Allowing the plaintiff to retain and weaponize the transcripts of their examinations as if they were Crown representative examinations would, in the Court’s view, let him benefit from an abusive pleading strategy and effectively bypass the statutory designation regime. Justice Rigaud also addresses the plaintiff’s reliance on P.G. Canada c. Biorex to argue for multiple examinations. The Court distinguishes Biorex on its facts, noting that the decision dealt with a situation involving several government departments, which justified designating more than one representative. By contrast, this case involves a single federal entity, the ARC, and there is no comparable factual complexity that would warrant immediate multiple representative examinations at the management stage. The Court nonetheless recognizes that, in line with authorities such as Vennat and others, nothing in the legislation absolutely prevents asking to examine more than one representative of the Crown. If, after the objections debate and any necessary undertakings, Ms. Soucy proves unable—despite reasonable inquiries—to provide the information reasonably required, the plaintiff may apply for leave to examine an additional ARC representative. The Court further notes that the plaintiff remains free to call Messrs. Calandriello and Ehramdjian as witnesses at trial. What he cannot do, however, is insist on preserving the stenographic notes of their pre-trial interrogatories as part of the discovery record, or insist on having a full objections debate on those examinations, given that his personal recourse against them has already been deemed abusive.

Outcome, successful party and financial consequences

In the result, the Court grants the Attorney General’s request on behalf of the ARC to structure and limit the next procedural steps around a single Crown representative. The Superior Court postpones the objections debate for up to three hours at a date to be fixed, expressly stating that this debate will concern only the examination of Ms. Soucy. The parties are encouraged to review and update their issue lists and objections tables so that the shortened debate can be conducted efficiently. In this management judgment, the ARC is therefore the successful party: its interpretation of section 7 of the Crown Liability Regulations is accepted, the plaintiff’s attempt to maintain and rely on the earlier interrogatories of Calandriello and Ehramdjian is rejected, and the discovery process is realigned around a single designated representative subject to the usual safeguards and potential later requests for an additional representative. The judgment does not, however, grant any monetary relief. Damages have not yet been adjudicated on the merits, and the Court concludes its order with “frais de justice à suivre,” expressly reserving the question of costs. As a result, no specific amount of damages, costs, or other monetary award is ordered in favour of any party at this stage, and the total monetary award or costs in favour of the successful party—the ARC—cannot presently be determined.