Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Plaintiffs claim $1,275,642.81 in damages representing tax penalties allegedly arising from prohibited investments placed in their RRSPs and TFSAs by their investment advisor.
• Defendants sought pre-trial rejection of the plaintiffs' expert report authored by Me Jean Turcotte, arguing he lacked sufficient qualifications to opine on the professional standards applicable to investment dealers and advisors.
• Under Article 241 of the Code of Civil Procedure, pre-trial rejection of an expert report is reserved for exceptional cases of irregularity, serious error, or bias — the threshold is high.
• Central to the dispute was whether Me Turcotte's background in tax law, financial planning, and securities — including one year as an investment advisor and decades training investment advisors — was adequate to address the suitability rule at the core of the claim.
• Sufficiency of expert qualification is assessed under the four-part admissibility framework established by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. c. Mohan.
• Notwithstanding the regulatory differences between investment dealers and financial planners, the court found that the suitability rule applies uniformly across both, anchoring Me Turcotte's qualification to the issues raised in his report.

Facts of the case

The plaintiffs — Isabelle Proulx, André Proulx, Suzanne Piché, Christian Guilbaud, David Guilbaud, and Alain Guilbaud — are suing defendants Corporation Canaccord Genuity (Canaccord) and Denis Amoroso before the Superior Court of Quebec, District of Montreal. The plaintiffs allege that between 2016 and 2021, Mr. Amoroso, acting as an investment advisor at Canaccord, failed to adequately advise them of the tax risks associated with their investments in Stelmine Canada Ltée (Stelmine), a publicly traded mineral exploration company. Specifically, Canaccord and Mr. Amoroso placed investments in Stelmine on behalf of the plaintiffs through registered retirement savings plans (RRSPs) and/or tax-free savings accounts (TFSAs), which collectively represented 35.4% of Stelmine's outstanding shares. In 2021, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) informed the plaintiffs that their holdings constituted prohibited investments under the Income Tax Act because the combined holdings of the plaintiffs, as related persons, exceeded the 10% threshold prescribed by that legislation. In 2022 and 2023, the plaintiffs received tax assessments from the CRA for the 2016 to 2022 taxation years. The alleged tax consequences include a 50% tax on the fair market value of the prohibited investments held in TFSAs, a 100% tax on the benefit derived from those investments, plus interest and penalties — totalling $1,275,642.81 in claimed damages. The plaintiffs allege that the defendants failed to inform them of the prohibited investment rules, failed to disclose that the 10% threshold was being exceeded, and validated the placements in their registered accounts without ever issuing a warning.

Applicable legal framework and procedural context

The matter before the court on April 7, 2026, was not the merits of the main claim but a pre-trial motion by the defendants to reject the expert report dated July 16, 2025, prepared by Me Jean Turcotte and filed by the plaintiffs. The motion was brought under Article 241 of the Code of Civil Procedure (C.p.c.), which permits a party to seek rejection of an expert report before trial on the grounds of irregularity, serious error, or bias. The defendants' sole ground was that Me Turcotte lacked sufficient qualifications to opine on the professional standards applicable to investment dealers and advisors regulated by the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO), formerly the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC). The applicable admissibility framework, as established by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. c. Mohan and confirmed in White Burgess Langille Inman c. Abbott and Haliburton Co., requires the court to assess four criteria: relevance, necessity, the absence of any exclusionary rule, and the expert's sufficient qualification. If those criteria are met, the court then exercises its discretion to weigh the probative value of the testimony against its potential prejudicial effect.

Court's reasoning and analysis

The court noted at the outset that pre-trial rejection of an expert report is an exceptional remedy and that the burden on the party seeking rejection is heavy. The defendants argued that Me Turcotte, who self-describes as a tax lawyer and financial planner, lacked the regulatory registrations, industry experience, and specialized training required to opine on the standards governing investment dealers and advisors. In particular, the defendants pointed out that Me Turcotte's only experience as an investment advisor spanned a single year, from 1995 to 1996, at Financière Banque Nationale; that his regulatory registrations are limited to insurance and financial planning; and that his two completed courses on securities trading — taken in 1986 and 1995 — had long since expired. They further noted that Canaccord and Mr. Amoroso are registered as investment dealers regulated by CIRO, while Me Turcotte's current employer, Financière Sun Life, operates as an insurance and financial planning firm subject to an entirely different regulatory regime.

The court rejected these arguments as insufficient to warrant pre-trial exclusion. It found that Me Turcotte's qualifications extended well beyond his formal registrations. He has been a member of the Quebec Bar, the Institut québécois de planification financière (IQPF), and the Association de planification fiscale et financière (APFF) throughout his career. He holds a financial security advisor permit issued by the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF). Over a career spanning more than 30 years in the financial services industry, he has prepared approximately 50 expert reports, several in the securities field, and has testified as an expert before the Superior Court and in disciplinary proceedings before the Chambre de la sécurité financière approximately ten times. The court also noted that in Babineau c. Raymond James ltée, 2024 QCCS 3460, Me Turcotte was retained by an investment dealer and recognized by the Superior Court as an expert in securities and the financial services industry. Although his qualification was uncontested in that case, the court found this gave rise to a positive inference rather than a negative one. The court further observed that Me Turcotte has, throughout his career, developed and delivered training organized by the IQPF and APFF to audiences that included investment advisors, and that the suitability rule — the core subject of his report — applies uniformly to all financial industry participants, whether investment advisors or financial planners. Crucially, Me Turcotte himself clarified at the hearing that the core issue in this case is not the quality of Stelmine shares but the suitability of transferring those shares into the plaintiffs' TFSAs and RRSPs — a framing that squarely falls within his established area of expertise. While four paragraphs of his 28-page report reference IIROC rules, the court found that this did not undermine his overall qualifications, citing the Supreme Court's instruction that it would be "excessively formalistic" to reject expert testimony simply because the witness ventures an opinion slightly beyond the precise domain for which they are qualified.

Ruling and outcome

The court dismissed the defendants' motion to reject Me Turcotte's expert report, finding that the plaintiffs — as the party opposing rejection — prevailed at this preliminary stage. The court held that Me Turcotte possesses sufficient qualifications to opine on the issues raised in his report and that, on a cost-benefit analysis, the report's probative value is not outweighed by any prejudicial effect. Costs were reserved to follow the outcome of the main action. No monetary award was made in this decision, as the ruling addressed only the preliminary admissibility of the expert report; the substantive claim for $1,275,642.81 remains to be determined at trial.