Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Plaintiff in a class action sought non-party document production and depositions related to prepaid purchase cards allegedly sold with prohibited fees and expiry dates under British Columbia's BPCPA.

• Court granted document production from non-party InComm Canada Prepaid under Rule 7-1(18), affirming that financial data held in electronic databases qualifies as producible "documents" under the Supreme Court Civil Rules.

• Letters of request and subpoena certificates under Rule 7-8 and the Subpoena (Interprovincial) Act were denied, as the court found the plaintiff's true purpose was pre-trial discovery of non-party witnesses, which is not permitted under B.C. law.

• Plaintiff's applications to deem denied facts as admitted or to strike responses to a voluminous notice to admit (over 1,400 requests) were dismissed against both the Vancity Defendants and the Peoples Defendants.

• Authorities confirmed that a bare denial to a notice to admit satisfies Rule 7-7(2)(a), with no requirement for supporting reasons, and the court declined to parse through hundreds of individual responses on an interlocutory basis.

• Section 12 of the Class Proceedings Act was held insufficient to authorize deeming unreasonable denials as admissions, as doing so would exceed the court's case management discretion and relieve the plaintiff of her burden of proof.

The class action and the prepaid card dispute

This proceeding, Jiang v. Peoples Trust Company, is a class action commenced in September 2014 in the Supreme Court of British Columbia by plaintiff Ying Jiang. The action concerns prepaid purchase cards — non-credit Visa or Mastercards — issued by various financial institutions, including Peoples Trust Company, Peoples Card Services Limited Partnership, Peoples Card Services Ltd., Vancouver City Savings Credit Union, Citizens Bank of Canada, Amex Bank of Canada, and All Trans Financial Services Credit Union Limited. The plaintiff alleges that the defendants sold these prepaid cards with expiry dates and charged fees for their purchase and use, contrary to Part 4.1 of the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act, S.B.C. 2004, c. 2 (BPCPA). Five common issues were certified, including whether the prepaid cards fall within the statutory definition of "prepaid purchase cards," whether the BPCPA applies to them, and whether prohibited fees were charged or cards issued with impermissible expiry dates.

Prior document production orders and the discovery process

On November 9, 2021, Justice McDonald ordered Peoples Trust to produce financial documents consisting of "any and all spreadsheets, summaries and/or reports of the fees collected, any balances seized, transactions or sales of the prepaid cards, and/or forecasting volumes of sales during the class period." The Court of Appeal subsequently dismissed a leave to appeal application from that order. During examinations for discovery, the nominee for Peoples Trust indicated that Peoples Trust did not have possession or control of certain financial documents and that they were potentially held by non-party program managers. This disclosure prompted the plaintiff to seek the documents directly from non-parties, including InComm Canada Prepaid, Inc., Blackhawk Network (Canada) Limited, MasterCard Prepaid Management Services Limited, Swift Prepaid Solutions, Inc., and Wex Health, Inc., among others.

The December 2025 decision on non-party production

In the first decision, dated December 29, 2025 (2025 BCSC 2559), the court addressed the plaintiff's applications under two procedural mechanisms. Under Rule 7-1(18), the plaintiff sought an order requiring InComm Canada Prepaid, Inc. to deliver financial documents, including spreadsheets, summaries, and reports, or alternatively, data exports from its databases. The court found that the plaintiff met the specificity requirements of Rule 7-1(18) and reaffirmed its earlier finding that the financial documents were relevant to the certified common issues, including whether fees were charged and whether class members were consumers under the legislation. The court rejected the respondents' argument that the documents related solely to aggregate damages, a non-certified common issue, and held that the previous determination of relevance could not be revisited simply because the documents were now found to be in the possession of a non-party. The court also rejected the argument that producing data from electronic databases amounted to impermissible "creation" of documents, relying on authorities holding that databases are producible documents under the Rules. The order was granted with a deadline of January 30, 2026 for InComm to deliver the material.

Denial of letters of request and subpoena certificates

The plaintiff also sought, under Rule 7-8 and the Subpoena (Interprovincial) Act, to compel representatives of non-parties located in other Canadian provinces and foreign jurisdictions to produce documents and testify or be deposed. The court denied this relief, finding that the true character of the application was to aid pre-trial examination and discovery of non-party witnesses, which is not permitted under B.C. law. The court relied on United Services Funds v. Richardson Greenshields of Canada Ltd. and Araya v. Nevsun Resources Ltd., concluding that the deposition and letters rogatory process cannot be utilized as a vehicle for pre-trial document discovery.

The costs determination in the December 2025 decision

The court held that InComm was entitled to recover its reasonable costs of producing the documents, with the parties directed to seek further direction if they could not agree on costs. The remaining non-party respondents, who successfully opposed the application under Rule 7-8, were awarded costs against the plaintiff at Scale B. The no-costs regime under the Class Proceedings Act was held inapplicable to non-parties.

The February 2026 decision on notice to admit responses

In the second decision, dated February 11, 2026 (2026 BCSC 259), the court addressed the plaintiff's applications challenging responses to a voluminous notice to admit served on the defendants. On June 13, 2025, the plaintiff served over 1,400 requests referencing tens of thousands of documents on the Peoples Defendants and the Vancity Defendants, with responses served on August 15, 2025. The plaintiff sought orders deeming certain denied facts as admitted, striking out responses, or requiring amended responses.

The Vancity Defendants' response and ruling

The Vancity Defendants responded by either admitting or denying each request, accompanied by a cover letter explaining their general concerns with the notice. The court found that the Vancity Defendants' bare denials complied with Rule 7-7(2)(a), relying on multiple authorities confirming that a simple denial is sufficient and requires no explanation. The cover letter did not transform the denials into non-compliant refusals. The application against the Vancity Defendants was dismissed.

The Peoples Defendants' response and ruling

The Peoples Defendants' response included denials, refusals on grounds of impropriety (such as requests calling for legal conclusions), and statements of inability to admit. The court found that the denials were clear and not derogated from by additional explanatory information. As to the refusals and inability responses under Rule 7-7(2)(b) and (c), the court was not convinced they were insufficient. The court noted it was neither feasible nor appropriate to parse through more than a thousand individual requests and responses on an interlocutory basis, consistent with the approach taken in Nouhi v. Pourtaghi and Sibble v. Google LLC. The propriety of the objections was left for consideration at or after trial, including in the context of any costs application under Rule 7-7(4). The application against the Peoples Defendants was also dismissed.

Section 12 of the Class Proceedings Act and the court's discretion

The plaintiff argued that s. 12 of the Class Proceedings Act provided supplementary authority for the court to deem unreasonable denials as admissions. The court disagreed, holding that determining explicitly disputed facts and potentially relieving the plaintiff of her burden of proof would far exceed the discretion granted by s. 12, which is directed at proceedings management rather than substantive adjudication. Rule 7-7 was found not to conflict with the CPA, and s. 12 did not provide an independent basis for the relief sought.

Overall outcome

Across both decisions, the plaintiff achieved partial success. In the December 2025 decision, the court granted the order compelling InComm Canada Prepaid, Inc. to produce the requested financial documents under Rule 7-1(18), but denied all relief sought under Rule 7-8 regarding letters of request and subpoena certificates, with the successful non-party respondents awarded costs at Scale B against the plaintiff. In the February 2026 decision, both applications challenging the defendants' responses to the notice to admit were dismissed in their entirety, with no specific monetary award determined. The common issues trial remains set to begin in November 2026.