By Paul Emanuelli
This article is an excerpt from Government Procurement, which is available for purchase.
In its May 2017 decision in Four Seasons Site Development Ltd. v. Toronto (City), the Ontario Superior Court of Justice granted an injunction against a municipal debarment decision. The applicant was barred from bidding on construction projects for alleged past performance issues. While the city had updated its procedures to enable debarment for past performance, the contractor challenged the retroactive application of those rules, arguing that city officials had acted outside of their authority since, at the material time, debarment only applied to code of conduct breaches but not to past performance. The court suspended the debarment decision until its merits could be assessed at trial.
