Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Procedural validity of a motion in retraction, including strict requirements of service by bailiff and compliance with the 30-day time limit under the Code of Civil Procedure
• Whether an AMF press release and related settlements with Rogers and Glentel constitute truly “new” evidence justifying retraction of a prior authorization judgment
• Adequacy of the factual substratum in the original authorization application to link Rogers and Glentel’s protection programs to the extended warranty product sold by La Source
• Extent of distributors’ and insurers’ obligations under the LDPSF and RMAD to provide prescribed documentation, disclosures, and tax treatment when selling extended protection plans
• Characterisation of various “protection” or extended warranty programs as insurance products, and whether prior, publicly available contracts and programs could and should have been raised earlier
• Impact of a change in legal theory (from distribution of an insurer’s product to a distributor acting as its own insurer) on the scope of the originally authorized class action and on the availability of retraction

Background and procedural history

This case arises from a proposed class action brought by Mr. Jean-Michel Normandin in the Class Actions Chamber of the Superior Court of Québec, District of Montréal (file no. 500-06-001282-231). Mr. Normandin originally sought authorization to represent all persons in Québec who purchased a “plan de protection” (protection plan or extended warranty) offered or sold by any of several defendants, including large retailers and telecommunications companies such as La Source (Bell) Électronique inc., Costco, Bell Mobilité, Rogers, Telus, and Glentel, as well as several insurers. The claim is framed under the Loi sur la distribution de produits et services financiers (LDPSF) and the Règlement sur les modes alternatifs de distribution (RMAD), as well as the rules governing taxes on insurance premiums.

Mr. Normandin alleges that he bought a DualShock wireless controller for a PlayStation 4 from La Source, along with an extended protection plan (the “Protection prolongée”) underwritten by Continental Casualty Company (CNA). He paid $18 for the protection plan, plus the federal GST (TPS) and Québec sales tax (TVQ), rather than the specific tax on insurance premiums (TPA). He claims that the extended protection constitutes “insurance” within the meaning of the LDPSF and RMAD, and that, as such, La Source and the involved insurer owed him various statutory duties around disclosure, documentation, remuneration disclosure, and correct tax treatment.

In a prior judgment dated 8 July 2025, the Superior Court partially authorized the class action. The Court allowed the action to proceed only against La Source and CNA, and only for a defined group of consumers who, between 10 August 2022 and 31 October 2024, purchased a protection plan from La Source in Québec that was insured by CNA and for which TPS and TVQ were charged on the plan price. The Court rejected the authorization request as against the other defendants, including Rogers and Glentel, largely on the basis that the allegations and evidence did not sufficiently ground a plausible cause of action or provide an adequate factual substratum on issues such as non-compliance with LDPSF/RMAD and wrongful charging of TPS/TVQ instead of TPA.

Following this partial authorization, Mr. Normandin brought a motion in retraction of judgment (pourvoi en rétractation) targeting the portion of the 8 July 2025 judgment that had refused authorization against Rogers and Glentel. The retraction request rested on what he characterized as “new facts” and “new evidence” that became available after the authorization hearing.

Allegations concerning the protection plans and regulatory framework

At the core of the underlying class action is the legal characterisation of the extended protection plans. Mr. Normandin contends that the “Protection prolongée” sold with electronic equipment is in reality an insurance product within the scope of the LDPSF and the RMAD. This classification, if accepted, carries significant consequences.

First, for distributors (like La Source, and allegedly other retail and telecom defendants), the LDPSF and RMAD impose obligations in the context of “distribution without a representative,” which governs how non-licensed entities may distribute certain insurance products. Among other things, the plaintiff says he should have received: prescribed information under article 431 LDPSF; a summary or information sheet for the protection plan prepared by the insurer as required by article 22 RMAD; clear notice where documents could not be delivered at the time of purchase; and disclosure of any distributor remuneration exceeding 30% of the premium.

Second, the plaintiff alleges tax non-compliance. He claims that consumers were charged GST and QST on the price of the protection plans, whereas products classified as insurance should instead attract the specific tax on insurance premiums (TPA), generally a lower rate. The central monetary relief sought for the class is recovery of the difference between the TPS/TVQ paid and the TPA that allegedly should have applied, along with related remedies such as punitive damages in certain circumstances.

The 8 July 2025 authorization judgment accepted that there was a sufficient factual and legal basis to proceed against La Source and CNA on these theories for the specified period and product, but found that the allegations and proof concerning other defendants, including Rogers and Glentel, were too vague, indirect, or remote in time. For example, it considered references to an old 2018 AMF dispute involving Costco and American Bankers, and a paragraph in Costco’s judicial review application mentioning other major industry players (Bell, Rogers, Telus) selling similar protections without mandated guides, as insufficient to establish a concrete factual substratum regarding Rogers and Glentel’s practices in 2023.

The attempted retraction and the AMF communiqué

The retraction motion is triggered by a press release issued on 19 June 2025 by the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF). In that communiqué, the AMF announced settlements with Rogers, Glentel and a third entity, Likewize, relating to certain “protection programs” that the AMF concluded were in fact insurance products rather than mere extended warranties. The communiqué explained that the coverage under those programs exceeded a simple extension of the manufacturer’s warranty, because they included, subject to conditions, repair or replacement of devices in cases of accidental damage or damage caused by liquid. According to the AMF, these features brought the programs within the scope of regulated insurance and required that they be offered by an authorized insurer. Once the conclusions of the AMF were communicated in the autumn of 2021, Rogers and Glentel rapidly and on their own initiative ceased offering the impugned programs and restructured their business models so that an authorized insurer would underwrite and distribute new protection programs.

The settlements described in the AMF communiqué concern protection plans administered by Likewize for the period roughly between 1 October 2014 and 31 December 2021. In these arrangements, Rogers and Glentel themselves bore the cost of repairs in cases of device malfunction. The AMF’s subsequent conclusion that these arrangements constituted insurance, and that the distribution had not complied with the applicable regulatory regime, appears to have been reached through the AMF’s analysis of the existing contracts and distribution practices.

Relying on this communiqué and the attached agreements with the AMF, Mr. Normandin argued in his retraction motion that, had he known these facts earlier, he would have framed his authorization request differently. In particular, he says he would have alleged the marketing of insurance-type protection products administered by Likewize and the conduct of Rogers and Glentel for the period predating autumn 2021. He contends that this new material supplies the factual foundation that the Court found lacking in respect of Rogers and Glentel in the 8 July 2025 authorization judgment.

Procedural defects: service and delay of the retraction motion

The Court first scrutinizes the formal admissibility of the retraction motion under the Code of Civil Procedure. Two defects prove fatal.

The first concerns service. Under articles 139 and 347 C.p.c., a motion for retraction of judgment must be served by bailiff (signification) on all parties. In this case, the motion was only notified to the lawyers of Rogers and Glentel; there was no proper service on the parties themselves, and no proof of such service in the court record. While notification can suffice for many procedural acts, retraction is expressly among the acts requiring formal signification, reflecting its seriousness as an exceptional remedy that can unsettle final judgments and the principle of res judicata. The plaintiff’s lawyers argued they were taken by surprise when opposing counsel raised the issue shortly before the October 24, 2025 hearing, and they invoked a lack of cooperation as well as absence of prejudice. The Court emphatically rejected these arguments, reiterating that ignorance of the law is no excuse, especially for lawyers, and that the duty of cooperation in article 20 C.p.c. does not oblige opponents to warn each other of procedural errors that may lead to dismissal. Moreover, the plaintiff’s counsel had not sought authorization to use an alternative notification mode, nor moved to be relieved from default once the issue surfaced.

The second defect is temporal. Article 347 C.p.c. imposes a strict 30-day period from the date when the cause for retraction disappears or is known, within which the retraction motion must be served. The AMF communiqué dated 19 June 2025 is the alleged new element; the retraction motion was only notified on 29 July 2025, already more than 30 days later, even if one were to improperly equate notification with formal service. The Court treats the 30-day delay as strictly applicable, absent an impossibility to act—a stringent notion not satisfied by the vacation of one of several counsel. No application was made to justify an impossibility, and no factual basis supports such a claim. On these grounds alone, the Court finds the retraction proceeding inadmissible.

Substantive requirements for retraction and the “new evidence” claim

Although the procedural flaws suffice to dispose of the matter, the Court goes on to examine the substantive conditions for retraction, given the exceptional nature of the remedy. Article 345 C.p.c. allows retraction where maintaining the judgment would undermine the administration of justice, including where a new piece of evidence, discovered after judgment despite the party’s reasonable diligence, would probably have led to a different outcome. Jurisprudence emphasizes that retraction, as an exception to the finality of judgments, demands serious grounds and clear satisfaction of all statutory criteria.

The Court identifies three key conditions when retraction is sought on the basis of alleged new evidence: (i) the evidence could not have been discovered in time; (ii) the party acted with diligence; and (iii) the new evidence would likely have changed the result on the original application.

On the first condition, the Court concludes that the AMF communiqué and settlements do not constitute “new evidence” in the relevant sense. They are new in time—issued after the authorization hearing—but they are built entirely on facts, contracts and programs that already existed and were public or accessible before the authorization application. What the plaintiff truly needed to support his original allegations was the concrete documentation and detailed description of the protection plans offered by Rogers and Glentel before 2023, including those that the AMF later re-qualified as insurance. Some of these documents were in fact already produced as exhibits with the authorization application, yet the plaintiff never advanced a legal theory treating them as insurance, nor did he allege specific regulatory non-compliance regarding them. Other plans were readily obtainable in the marketplace and had even been the subject of a prior class action (initiated by the same firm) concerning Glentel’s protection programs. The AMF’s later legal and regulatory analysis does not transform pre-existing, discoverable facts into “new” evidence; it simply confirms a qualification and compliance assessment that the plaintiff’s counsel could and should have undertaken themselves when building their original case.

On the second condition, diligence, the Court again finds the plaintiff wanting. If, arguendo, the AMF communiqué were accepted as new, the plaintiff still would have had to move promptly within the 30-day statutory period. He failed to do so. More fundamentally, he has not shown that he could not, with reasonable diligence, have discovered and pleaded the underlying facts about Rogers and Glentel’s protection programs before the authorization hearing. The programs were openly marketed to the public, and some contractual documents were in hand but not analysed or invoked in the way now sought.

On the third condition, impact on the original judgment, the Court holds that even if all procedural and “new evidence” hurdles were overcome, the requested retraction could not achieve the intended result. The authorization judgment was carefully circumscribed: it concerned distributors selling equipment covered by extended protection plans underwritten by an external insurer, where the alleged wrongs related to failures to comply with the LDPSF/RMAD distribution-without-representative regime and mischarging TPS/TVQ instead of TPA on what were pleaded as insured products. By contrast, the AMF communiqué deals with an earlier period in which Rogers and Glentel allegedly acted, in substance, as their own insurers for certain protection programs, without an authorized insurer formally underwriting those plans. That raises a different legal problem—whether they unlawfully offered insurance products themselves—not the same regulatory theory pled for the authorized action against La Source and CNA. To fold these facts into the existing class action would effectively introduce a new cause of action and a different product universe, going beyond the originally framed claim and the group definition. The Court finds that the retraction motion seeks to re-engineer the litigation’s scope in light of a new regulatory assessment, not to correct an injustice resulting from previously unavailable decisive evidence.

Outcome and implications

Ultimately, the Superior Court concludes that the motion in retraction is inadmissible and unfounded. Procedurally, it fails to respect the mandatory requirements of service by bailiff and the strict 30-day time limit. Substantively, the AMF communiqué and ensuing settlements do not qualify as genuinely new evidence that could not have been discovered with reasonable diligence, nor would they have compelled a different result in the earlier authorization decision. The Court emphasizes the exceptional and narrow nature of retraction as a remedy in a system that values the stability and finality of judgments.

As a result, the 8 July 2025 authorization judgment stands as originally rendered: the class action proceeds only against La Source (Bell) Électronique inc. and Continental Casualty Company with respect to the defined group, and authorization remains refused against Rogers Communications Canada Inc. and Glentel Inc. In this retraction judgment, the successful parties are Rogers and Glentel, as the Court rejects Mr. Normandin’s Demande en rétractation de jugement with costs in their favour. The judgment orders costs of justice against the plaintiff but does not specify any exact dollar amount for those costs, nor does it award any damages or other monetary sums at this stage; the total monetary award in favour of the successful parties cannot be determined from the judgment.