Individuals and corporations have long been reluctant to express any kind of sympathy or remorse to a person who has made a claim against them, even though it might clearly be the humane thing to do.\u00a0 Academic literature has demonstrated that many people really just want a recognition of wrongdoing and an apology, and many surveys have shown that a good proportion of parties initiating civil litigation would have refrained from doing so if they had been given a proper apology by the alleged wrongdoer.<\/p>\n
Ontario has recently passed legislation that ensures that an apology cannot be considered as an admission of fault or liability and is not admissible in any civil proceeding initiated by the person apologized to.\u00a0 An apology is broadly defined to include:\u00a0 \u201can expression of sympathy or regret, a statement that a person is sorry or any other words or actions indicating contrition or commiseration, whether or not the words or actions admit fault or liability or imply an admission of fault or liability\u201d.<\/p>\n
Legislation relating to apologies is very new in Canada and, at the present time, only three provinces have Apology Acts<\/em>.\u00a0 British Columbia was the first province to pass an Apology Act<\/em> which came into force on May 18, 2006.\u00a0 Manitoba\u2019s \u00a0Apology Act<\/em> \u00a0came into force in February, 2008.\u00a0 Ontario\u2019s Apology Act<\/em> has been in force since April 23, 2009.<\/p>\n Saskatchewan dealt with the legal effect of an apology by providing a section in its Evidence Act <\/em>that has the same effect as the Apology Acts<\/em> in the other provinces.\u00a0 This section was enacted on May 17, 2007.<\/p>\n When the Ontario legislation was introduced, one of the stated aims of the Apology Act <\/em>was to reduce lawsuits by allowing communications of genuine compassion, sorrow or regret.<\/p>\n So far, there is no Canadian case law dealing with any of these Apology Acts<\/em>.\u00a0 However, the purpose of the Acts is clear.\u00a0 There was a recognition that parties were afraid to express an apology for fear of the apology being taken as an admission of liability or guilt.\u00a0 The literature demonstrated that many individuals who became involved in civil litigation would have refrained from initiating actions, if they had received an apology.<\/p>\n As noted by British Columbia Attorney General’s discussion paper on apology legislation, the factors favouring apology legislation included:<\/p>\n (a)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to avoid litigation and encourage the early and cost-effective resolution of disputes;<\/p>\n (b)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to encourage natural, open and direct dialogue between people after injuries; and<\/p>\n (c)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to encourage people to engage in the moral and humane act of apologizing after they have injured another and to take responsibility for their actions.<\/p>\n The discussion paper went on to recognize that there may be some negative results, such as the effect on public confidence if a person had admitted liability in an apology and was later found not liable in a civil action, insincere apologies could be encouraged and vulnerable people might not pursue the full extent of recourse open to them.\u00a0 Despite the possible negatives, the four provinces mentioned have moved forward with apology legislation, in order to recognize the benefits of apologies, both morally and as a way to resolve disputes without resort to civil litigation.<\/p>\n The whole purpose of apology legislation is to allow a party who is accused of a wrong to offer some solace to the party who feels they have suffered a wrong, without admitting civil liability.\u00a0 \u00a0It allows humane expressions of regret or sympathy without having such expressions used later in a civil action.\u00a0 Although it is too early to tell, it is hoped that the result will be to allow solace to be offered to those who have been injured or suffered damage to assist in the healing process.<\/p>\n This article was originally posted in the February 7, 2009 edition of the Ottawa Business Journal. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Individuals and corporations have long been reluctant to express any kind of sympathy or remorse to a person who has made a claim against them, even though it might clearly be the humane thing to do.\u00a0 Academic literature has demonstrated that many people really just want a recognition of wrongdoing and an apology, and many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_expertise_area":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[161],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publications"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/perlaw.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/perlaw.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/perlaw.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perlaw.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perlaw.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1647"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/perlaw.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2862,"href":"https:\/\/perlaw.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1647\/revisions\/2862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/perlaw.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perlaw.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perlaw.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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