Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Pierre Grenier sued ExpertBâtiment Services-Conseils inc. in Quebec's Small Claims Division for $7,400, alleging negligence caused him to miss a federal energy-subsidy deadline.
   
• Central to the case was whether ExpertBâtiment breached a duty of diligence in scheduling Grenier's mandatory energy inspection.
   
• Conflicting testimony arose over the date Grenier registered for the federal program, with documentary evidence contradicting his recollection.
   
• Grenier's own health emergency and work schedule raised doubts about whether he could have attended the inspection regardless of when it was booked.
   
• Quantum problems affected both heads of Grenier's claim, since the amounts pleaded did not match the actual fees and subsidy caps in evidence.
   
• Ultimately, the court found no fault, no established causal link, and dismissed the claim in its entirety.
   

Facts of the case

Pierre Grenier had owned a property in Gatineau for 33 years and sought to take advantage of the federal Greener Homes program, which supplemented Quebec's existing Réno-Climat program. The federal program required a certified energy inspection to be completed by an accredited firm no later than February 19, 2024. ExpertBâtiment Services-Conseils inc. ("ExpertBâtiment"), a firm that had provided energy-evaluation services since 2005 and held a mandate under a call for tenders issued by Quebec's Ministry of the Environment, was responsible for conducting these inspections. According to ExpertBâtiment's Director of Operations and Development, Fabrice Papuli, Grenier registered for the federal program on February 9, 2024, and ExpertBâtiment was notified of this registration on February 12 through an intermediary firm, GMI. ExpertBâtiment contacted Grenier on February 14, and the parties agreed on an inspection appointment for February 23, 2024, with a follow-up confirmation call placed on February 21. Grenier did not attend the appointment. He testified that his cell phone had been non-functional for roughly two weeks around that period and that he was separately hospitalized with a severe case of COVID-19 until the end of February. Following his absence, ExpertBâtiment issued an invoice for a $75 cancellation fee plus applicable taxes, which Grenier refused to pay. He ultimately brought a claim for $7,400, consisting of $700 tied to the invoiced fee and $6,692 for the federal subsidy he claimed to have lost as a result of missing the inspection deadline.

Policy and legislative provisions at issue

The decision turned on Quebec's civil burden-of-proof rules under articles 2803 and 2804 of the Civil Code of Québec, which require a claimant to establish the facts underlying their claim on a balance of probabilities, and on the three-part test for civil liability: fault, injury, and a causal link between them. The court also applied article 1479 C.C.Q., under which a party responsible for an injury is not liable for an aggravation of that injury that the victim could have avoided — relevant here to Grenier's failure to pursue the available provincial subsidy. Contractually, ExpertBâtiment's obligations flowed from its call-for-tenders agreement with the Ministry of the Environment, which required it to contact program registrants within 48 business hours of registration and to schedule and complete an energy evaluation within 15 days of that registration. Finally, article 340 of the Code of Civil Procedure, governing the award of legal costs to the successful party, informed the disposition on costs.

Reasoning and analysis

The court found Papuli's testimony precise, clear, and convincing, and preferred it over Grenier's account. Grenier had testified that he registered for the federal program at its outset, in 2023 [footnote 10]; the court, however, described this as not having occurred "at the beginning of the program (i.e., in 2020)" [para. 27] — the judgment itself gives two different years (2020 and 2023) for this same point, an inconsistency in the source document rather than a drafting error introduced here. What the court did find, on the evidence, was that Grenier's actual registration occurred only on February 9, 2024 — leaving just ten days before the February 19 deadline. The court also rejected Grenier's assertion that ExpertBâtiment had only two inspectors covering the Outaouais region; the evidence established a team of 60 inspectors overall, seven of whom were dedicated to that region, with additional capacity to reassign inspectors as needed. ExpertBâtiment contacted Grenier within the required 48-hour window and booked the inspection within the contractual 15-day period, satisfying its obligations even though the resulting appointment fell after the federal deadline. The court further noted that Grenier himself confirmed he was aware of the February 19 deadline throughout this period and had agreed to the February 23 appointment. Even setting fault aside, the court found no causal link: by Grenier's own account, he could not have attended the appointment in any event, whether because of his inflexible work schedule, his malfunctioning phone, or his hospitalization — circumstances unconnected to any conduct by ExpertBâtiment. On quantum, the court noted that the $700 fee Grenier sought to have reimbursed did not match the evidence, since the actual cancellation fee was $75 plus tax, which he had never paid. Likewise, the $6,692 subsidy claim exceeded the federal program's maximum available subsidy of $5,000, and no documentary evidence supported the specific renovation work Grenier said he undertook in mid-2024. The court also observed that Grenier had made no effort to pursue Quebec's parallel Réno-Climat program, under which Papuli testified he could have obtained $2,500, raising a failure-to-mitigate concern under article 1479 C.C.Q.

Ruling and overall outcome

The court dismissed Grenier's claim in its entirety, concluding that he had not met his burden of proving fault, injury, or causation against ExpertBâtiment. Legal costs were awarded in favour of the defendant, ExpertBâtiment Services-Conseils inc., as the successful party, though the judgment does not specify a dollar figure for those costs.