Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Late but completed filing of 2021 election financial reports triggered candidate ineligibility under s. 65(i) of the Canada Elections Act and raised questions about statutory interpretation.
• Reinterpretation of s. 65(i) by Elections Canada, based on inconsistency between the English and French versions, rendered Ms. Yan’s appeal effectively moot by restoring her eligibility to run in future federal elections.
• The court addressed whether prior leave under a vexatious litigant order (s. 140 CJA) to commence an application also authorizes an appeal and related motions, concluding that separate leave is required for appeal proceedings.
• Judicial discretion was exercised to retroactively grant leave for the costs motion in light of the novelty of the s. 140 issue and the fact that the underlying litigation would have been unnecessary under the Agency’s new interpretation.
• The court considered residual jurisdiction to award costs on an abandoned appeal and weighed Ms. Yan’s request for substantial costs against the Agency’s good-faith change of interpretation to further Charter values.
• Concern that public bodies not be penalized through costs for good-faith statutory re-interpretation led the court to decline any costs award, resulting in no monetary recovery for either party.

Factual background and the origins of the dispute

Ms. Nathalie Xian Yi Yan was a candidate in the 2021 federal general election. She filed the financial reports required under the Canada Elections Act, S.C. 2000, c. 9 (the Act), but did so in an improper form and outside the prescribed deadline. Because of this late and non-compliant filing, Elections Canada (the Agency) advised her in March 2025 that she was ineligible to stand as a candidate in the April 2025 federal general election under s. 65(i) of the Act. The practical consequence was that she could not register as a candidate in that election. In response, Ms. Yan applied to the Superior Court of Justice for an extension of time to file her 2021 financial report and/or for relief from the consequences of the late filing. Her objective was to cure the filing deficiency so she could run in the 2025 federal election.

Vexatious litigant status and leave to commence proceedings

Before that application was decided, Ms. Yan had been declared a vexatious litigant on January 16, 2025, in other proceedings, under s. 140 of the Courts of Justice Act (CJA). That vexatious litigant order (VLO) required her to obtain leave from a Superior Court judge to institute or continue any proceeding in any court. Because of the VLO, Ms. Yan first sought and obtained leave under s. 140(3)–(4) CJA to bring her application about the late financial reporting and her candidacy. The application judge held that the application itself was not an abuse of process and that Ms. Yan acted reasonably in bringing it, so he granted leave. However, on the merits he dismissed her application, finding that the court had no jurisdiction to extend the statutory deadline for filing the reports and that Ms. Yan had not shown sufficient due diligence in relation to those filings.

The initial appeal and the later change in interpretation

Ms. Yan then filed a notice of appeal to the Court of Appeal for Ontario from the order dismissing her application. She sought to challenge both the jurisdictional finding and the assessment of her diligence. While that appeal was pending, Elections Canada revisited the proper interpretation of s. 65(i) of the Act. On November 14, 2025, the Agency issued Interpretation Note 2025-08, Effect of Late Reporting on Eligibility. In that note, Elections Canada acknowledged that there was an inconsistency between the English and French versions of s. 65(i). The Agency announced that going forward it would apply the English version, which narrows the class of ineligible individuals to those who have failed to file required financial reports, as opposed to those who merely filed late. Under this revised position, the Agency concluded that individuals, including Ms. Yan, who had filed the necessary reports but did so late, would no longer be ineligible to be candidates. On December 23, 2025, Elections Canada advised Ms. Yan that her name had been removed from the list of ineligible candidates for future federal elections. The court noted that, had this interpretation been in force in March 2025, Ms. Yan would have been allowed to run in the April 2025 federal election, and the litigation over her eligibility would not have been necessary.

Procedural posture: motion to abandon appeal and seek costs

Because the revised interpretation of s. 65(i) gave Ms. Yan what she ultimately wanted—eligibility to run in future elections—her appeal effectively became moot. On January 23, 2026, she brought a motion in the Court of Appeal seeking permission to abandon her appeal and, importantly, a costs order in her favour both for the appeal and the underlying application. At the hearing she made clear she wished to abandon the appeal without conditions and was pursuing only costs against the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada (the CEO). The motion therefore squarely raised two issues: whether Ms. Yan, as a person subject to a VLO, required separate leave under s. 140 CJA to advance this motion and the appeal, and whether she was entitled to costs of an appeal she was abandoning as moot.

Legal framework: vexatious litigant orders, appeals, and the need for separate leave

The first substantive question was whether Ms. Yan’s earlier leave under s. 140(4) CJA to commence the Superior Court application automatically carried through to authorize an appeal and any related motions in the Court of Appeal. The court held that it did not. A VLO under s. 140 typically restrains a person from instituting or continuing any proceeding in any court without leave, and an “appeal” is itself a “proceeding.” Relying on prior authority and the terms of the VLO, the court concluded that leave granted to start or continue a particular proceeding (such as the original application) does not suspend the ongoing operation of the VLO for all future related steps. In other words, leave does not “travel” with the case into appellate levels; a separate leave order is required for each new proceeding, including an appeal and motions in that appeal. The judge reasoned that to hold otherwise would risk recreating the very mischief that VLOs seek to prevent: repeated, potentially vexatious steps that burden other parties and the court system.

Exercise of discretion to grant leave retroactively for the motion

Although Ms. Yan had failed to obtain separate leave before filing her appeal and costs motion, the court took an accommodating approach in light of the case’s exceptional circumstances. Three considerations were central. First, the appeal itself had been abandoned, and abandonment requires no permission, leaving only the question of costs to be determined. Second, the question of whether s. 140 leave to start an initial proceeding extended automatically to appeals had not, in the court’s view, been squarely resolved before; it was reasonable that Ms. Yan did not appreciate that she needed fresh leave. Third, and most significantly, the court observed that both the appeal and the motion for costs rested on reasonable grounds and were not abusive, given that, under the Agency’s new interpretation of s. 65(i), Ms. Yan would have been eligible to run and the entire dispute would have been unnecessary. In these circumstances, the judge exercised his jurisdiction as a Superior Court judge (pursuant to s. 13(2) CJA), dispensed with the usual procedural requirements under the Rules of Civil Procedure, and granted Ms. Yan leave under s. 140(4) CJA to bring the motion for costs. The court emphasized, however, that this was an exceptional step dictated by the unique facts and the previous uncertainty in the law. Going forward, litigants subject to a VLO must obtain leave from a Superior Court judge under s. 140(3) before filing a notice of appeal or any associated motion in the Court of Appeal; otherwise the Registrar will refuse to accept such filings under the relevant rules.

Rules governing abandonment of appeals and ordinary costs consequences

On the procedural question of abandonment, the court clarified that an appellant does not require “permission” to abandon an appeal. The Rules of Civil Procedure allow an appeal to be abandoned simply by filing a notice of abandonment. Ms. Yan had already prepared a draft notice for that purpose. Typically, when an appeal is abandoned, the respondent is entitled to its costs of the appeal, unless it has not filed any responding materials. In this case, the CEO had not filed responding material on the appeal and did not seek costs for the motion. Accordingly, on the usual application of the rules there would be no basis for a costs order in the respondent’s favour. The remaining live issue was whether the Court of Appeal, exercising its residual discretion under s. 131 CJA, should go further and award costs in favour of Ms. Yan on an appeal that she herself was abandoning.

Consideration of statutory language, policy, and Charter-related values

Substantively, the policy and interpretive issues centred on s. 65(i) of the Canada Elections Act and the Agency’s Interpretation Note 2025-08. The provision sets out the category of individuals who are ineligible to be candidates based on failures relating to election financial reporting. The Agency recognized a discrepancy between the English version, which focuses on a failure to file, and the French version, which could be read more broadly. By choosing to adopt the narrower English version, the Agency restricted ineligibility to those who had not filed a required report at all and excluded those who had filed late but ultimately complied. The court accepted that the Agency’s prior, more restrictive interpretation had been reasonable in light of the bilingual inconsistency. At the same time, it acknowledged that the new interpretation was adopted to align with the principle that statutory ambiguity, particularly in areas touching democratic participation, should be resolved in a way that furthers Charter rights and values. The decision thus situates the case at the intersection of election law, statutory interpretation in a bilingual context, and the protection of democratic rights through purposive, Charter-informed readings of legislation.

Outcome on the motion and identification of the successful party

Ms. Yan sought $150,000 in costs, or such other “justified” amount as the court might determine, arguing that had the Agency applied its current interpretation of s. 65(i) earlier, she would never have been barred from running and the litigation would not have been necessary. The court accepted that the late change in interpretation was what rendered the proceedings moot, but it declined to order any costs in her favour. It reasoned that Elections Canada’s earlier interpretation was reasonable and that the Agency had, after the election, proactively revised its approach in good faith to advance Charter values. The judge expressed the concern that public and statutory bodies should not be penalized through adverse costs awards for revising their interpretations of legislation in a principled, rights-enhancing manner. On balance, the court concluded that no party should receive costs. The formal disposition was that Ms. Yan’s appeal was treated as abandoned, her motion for costs was dismissed, and no costs were ordered to either side. In practical terms, the Chief Electoral Officer successfully resisted the only remaining contested relief—Ms. Yan’s bid for a substantial costs award—yet the court deliberately ordered that no monetary amounts be exchanged, meaning that the successful party obtained a costs-neutral outcome and no monetary award, damages, or costs were granted in favour of anyone, so no recoverable amount can be stated.