Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Legality of Santé Québec’s decisions to revoke PSOC funding and terminate two service agreements with ALEDIA, and whether these decisions can all be reviewed within a single judicial review proceeding.
• Proper scope of the judicial review pleadings following an order to split (scind) the original hybrid action into a control judiciaire component and a separate damages claim.
• Debate over whether allegations and exhibits relating to the terminated service agreements improperly reintroduce issues said to belong exclusively to the later damages action.
• Interpretation of the prior Mayer judgment on scission of instance, particularly whether it limits the judicial review to the PSOC convention alone or also covers the termination of the service agreements.
• Characterization of the relief sought: distinction between public law remedies (annulment/review and restoration of funding) versus private law damages, and whether the current conclusions still amount to a damages claim.
• Case management considerations regarding the completeness of the judicial review record and the need to preserve relevant factual context, while deferring quantification of damages to a later stage.

Factual background

The Association lavalloise pour la déficience intellectuelle et le trouble du spectre de l’autisme (ALEDIA) is a non-profit community organization that provides services to persons living with intellectual disabilities or autism. Its clientele comes from both the private and public sectors, and its operations are partially financed through public subsidies from Santé Québec and other funders. ALEDIA’s relationship with Santé Québec and the CISSS de Laval was structured around three core funding instruments: the PSOC support convention (Convention de soutien au titre d’organisme communautaire), which provided general community-organization funding, and two separate service agreements, one financing day activities and the other financing an alternating-respite housing program. These instruments together formed the backbone of ALEDIA’s public funding. Beginning in April 2021, Santé Québec expressed concerns about ALEDIA’s management of human and financial resources. On 13 September 2021, Santé Québec imposed a 25% holdback on the PSOC subsidy pending an auditor’s report and the implementation of any recommended corrective measures by ALEDIA’s board. In the months that followed, tensions grew regarding ALEDIA’s level of cooperation with the auditor and CISSS representatives. Approximately one year later, Santé Québec decided to end its financial relationship with ALEDIA. On 9 November 2022, it revoked all funding under the PSOC convention. Then, by letter dated 18 November 2022, it terminated the two service agreements, effective 31 March 2023. As of that date, ALEDIA lost not only its PSOC subsidy but also all funding previously provided through the two service agreements, putting its financial viability and the continuity of services to vulnerable users in jeopardy. ALEDIA challenged the 9 November 2022 decision administratively and judicially. In December 2022, it requested internal review of the decision; on 9 March 2023, the Review Committee upheld Santé Québec’s position. The day before that outcome, on 8 March 2023, ALEDIA had filed a motion for interlocutory injunction seeking to force Santé Québec to pay the held-back PSOC amounts, reimburse the revoked subsidies, and reinstate funding under both the PSOC convention and the service agreements until a favourable review decision or, failing that, until a final ruling on the legality of the 9 November 2022 decision. The injunction was refused at both the provisional and interlocutory stages.

Procedural history and the split of proceedings

In May 2023, ALEDIA launched a hybrid action: a combined application for judicial review and a damages claim. After amendment in June 2023, it sought four main forms of relief: reinstatement of the PSOC convention, a declaration that non-renewal of the service agreements was unlawful, payment of the PSOC and service-agreement funding, and an award of 100,000 dollars in damages. The progress of the file was slowed by several preliminary motions brought by Santé Québec, including a partial dismissal motion (later rejected), a motion to sever (scind) the instance, and the present motion to strike allegations and exhibits. On 18 February 2025, Justice Paul Mayer granted the motion to sever. He ordered the action to be split so that the judicial review component would proceed first, separately from the damages claim. The damages portion was suspended, with instructions for a separate timetable to be set only after a judgment on the judicial review. Following that ruling (the Mayer judgment), ALEDIA amended its introductory application, now styled as a Demande introductive d’instance de pourvoi en contrôle judiciaire. In the new version, ALEDIA removed the explicit monetary damages claim of 100,000 dollars. Instead, the application focused on challenging the legality of the funding revocation and terminations and sought remedial public law relief designed to reverse the effects of those administrative decisions.

Nature of the current relief and discussion of terms

In its amended judicial review application, ALEDIA seeks several forms of relief that flow from the same administrative decisions. It asks that Santé Québec be ordered to pay all sums withheld since September 2021, reimburse the subsidies revoked since 9 November 2022, and reinstate the PSOC convention. It further seeks orders compelling Santé Québec to restore the service agreements for day activities and for alternating-respite housing, pay the funding that should have been provided under those agreements since 31 March 2023, and fund those agreements for at least one further year, subject to renewal, with interest and the additional indemnity under article 1619 C.c.Q. The underlying legal context is that judicial review in Quebec under article 529 C.p.c. empowers the Superior Court to revise or annul decisions of bodies or persons under Quebec legislative authority where there is an absence or excess of jurisdiction or where serious procedural irregularities occur. In this case, the court emphasizes that the source of the impugned decisions—whether the PSOC convention or the service agreements—is immaterial for jurisdictional purposes, provided the decisions emanate from an entity subject to Quebec’s public law framework. The debate in this judgment is not about specific clauses in the PSOC convention or service agreements in the classic contractual sense (e.g., interpretation of termination or renewal clauses in isolation), but rather about whether Santé Québec’s decisions to revoke and terminate, taken through different internal decision-makers in different directorates, can be treated together as a single continuum of public decisions subject to judicial review. The court notes that ALEDIA’s current conclusions, although somewhat awkwardly drafted, no longer seek a standalone private-law damages award. Instead, they aim at setting aside or remedying the effects of the allegedly unlawful administrative decisions and restoring the funding framework that previously applied.

Santé Québec’s motion to strike and its arguments

Santé Québec brought a motion for the striking of allegations and removal of certain exhibits. It contended that, in light of the Mayer judgment ordering the scission of the instance, the judicial review application should now be confined to issues surrounding the PSOC convention, while issues related to the two service agreements and their termination should be relegated entirely to the deferred damages action. It argued that several paragraphs of the pleading—particularly those describing the service agreements, their termination, and the financial consequences for ALEDIA—improperly intertwined matters related to the judicial review and the future damages claim. Similarly, it sought to strike the exhibits consisting of the two service agreements and the 18 November 2022 termination letter. Santé Québec also invited the court to strike the conclusions that, in its view, still related to the damages aspect of the case, even though the pleading no longer expressly claimed the earlier 100,000-dollar damages amount. In substance, Santé Québec’s position attempted to draw a bright line between the PSOC decision and the decisions to terminate the service agreements by invoking the fact that different internal decision-makers, in distinct directorates, were involved. It urged that the judicial review be limited accordingly, and that the record be trimmed to exclude material related to the service agreements.

The court’s analysis of the Mayer judgment and scope of judicial review

The Superior Court rejects Santé Québec’s proposed reading of the Mayer judgment. Justice Breault notes that the Mayer judgment orders a scission based on the nature of the remedies—public law control judiciaire first, followed by a separate proceeding on private-law damages—not on a segmentation of the multiple administrative decisions themselves. The earlier judgment does not distinguish between the PSOC revocation decision and the service-agreement terminations; it simply defers the damages issues to a later stage. The court emphasizes that ALEDIA has complied with the Mayer judgment by withdrawing its explicit 100,000-dollar damages claim from the judicial review pleading. What remains is a coherent judicial review dossier that challenges the legality of all the relevant decisions taken by Santé Québec: the revocation of the PSOC subsidy and the termination of the two service agreements. The requested relief—annulment or revision of those decisions and restoration of the associated funding—is properly situated within the powers conferred on the Superior Court under article 529 C.p.c. The court rejects the notion that allegations and exhibits concerning the service agreements must be excised simply because a later claim in damages will address the financial consequences of these same decisions. Rather, the legality of the terminations themselves is part of what the judicial review is meant to examine. From a case-management perspective, the court underlines that it will be for the judge hearing the judicial review on the merits to determine whether the circumstances warrant exercising the powers in article 529 C.p.c. to annul or revise the decisions, and what specific remedial orders should flow from that assessment.

Outcome, successful party and monetary consequences

On this motion, the Superior Court dismisses Santé Québec’s demande en radiation et retrait de pièces. It holds that ALEDIA’s current judicial review pleading properly reflects the scission ordered by Justice Mayer: it reserves the quantification of private-law damages for a later stage while still legitimately contesting the legality of both the PSOC revocation and the service-agreement terminations. The impugned allegations and exhibits therefore remain in the record. As a management measure, the court orders the parties to agree on and file a revised timetable for the preparation of the judicial review within 15 days. The successful party in this incidental judgment is ALEDIA, whose position is fully upheld, while the motion of Santé Québec is rejected. No specific monetary award, damages amount, or quantified costs are granted at this stage; costs are expressly left “to follow the event” of the main instance, meaning that the future judgments on the merits of the judicial review and any subsequent damages action will determine if and in what amount any costs or monetary relief are ultimately ordered. Accordingly, the total monetary award or costs in favour of the successful party cannot yet be determined from this decision alone.