Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• The case examines whether an insurer's obligation under a homeowners' policy extends to guaranteeing the quality of roofing work performed by an independently retained contractor.
   
• Recurring transverse folds and bumps across all eight sections of a newly installed steel roof were found to constitute a permanent construction defect rather than an unavoidable manufacturing phenomenon.
   
• Expert opinions diverged on whether faulty installation technique or an uneven roof deck caused the deformations, with the court favouring the contractor-side experts over the defendant's engineer.
   
• Statutory duties to inform clients of foreseeable risks before contracting proved central to allocating responsibility for the defective work.
   
• Punitive damages were awarded under Quebec's consumer protection legislation after the contractor's principal falsely assured the homeowners that visible defects were merely temporary.
   
• A judicial set-off between the unpaid balance owed under the roofing contract and the damages owed for defects and incomplete work produced the final monetary award.
   

Facts of the case

Gilles Gauvin and France Boislard, co-owners of a home in Montreal's Rivière-des-Prairies–Pointe-aux-Trembles borough, saw a large tree fall onto their roof during a windstorm in September 2021, damaging the existing Ondura-brand roofing over two of the home's eight roof sections. They submitted a claim to their insurer, Intact Assurances, whose in-house adjuster, Robert Morency, managed the file. Because the original Ondura product and colour were discontinued, and a municipal bylaw required uniform roofing materials across a single building, the couple sought quotes to replace the entire roof rather than only the damaged sections. After being unable to find a contractor through Intact's approved network, Boislard located Toitures Supérieures FP Inc., a company owned by François Plante, whose sales representative, Gabriel Forget, proposed steel roofing panels manufactured by Metola as an alternative to Ondura.

Two quotations were accepted and approved by Intact: one for $21,980.92 covering the damaged sections, and one for $57,011.50 covering the remaining six sections, for a combined contract price of $78,992.42. The homeowners were clear throughout that they would not pay anything beyond what Intact reimbursed. Despite this, Toitures Supérieures repeatedly sought additional payments after the contract was signed, including for removing a second layer of asphalt shingles beneath the Ondura, extra waste containers, and a steel price increase; Intact denied most of these as home improvements rather than storm-related repairs.

Work began on January 10, 2022, considerably delayed from the original fall 2021 schedule. Shortly after the first steel panels were installed, the homeowners noticed transverse folds and repeated bumps along the panels. Plante told them this was a temporary effect of cold winter installation that would disappear once the metal warmed in spring. Relying on this assurance, the couple made partial payments totalling $74,436.16. When the deformations persisted into spring, Plante left the site in mid-March 2022, having performed some work he later acknowledged was substandard and having left other contracted work unfinished; by early April 2022 he confirmed the company would not return to complete the work unless outstanding amounts were paid in full, at which point Toitures Supérieures abandoned the site.

An architect retained by the homeowners, Marc Jobin, inspected the roof and concluded that the deformations were permanent defects resulting from improper installation, not a temporary or acceptable condition. A formal notice was sent to Toitures Supérieures in April 2022; the contractor's counsel responded the following month denying liability and asserting a counterclaim for additional work, but no remedial work was performed. The homeowners then sued Toitures Supérieures FP Inc. and Intact Assurances jointly for $150,000 to redo the roofing, together with $15,000 in moral damages and $15,000 in punitive damages sought against Toitures Supérieures FP Inc. specifically, and $5,000 in punitive damages sought against Intact Assurances specifically. Toitures Supérieures counterclaimed for unpaid additional work. The trial, held over six days in March 2026, included expert testimony from an architect and two engineers, as well as a site visit by the presiding judge.

Policy and legislative provisions at issue

The homeowners' insurance contract with Intact was governed by articles 2389 and 2463 of the Civil Code of Quebec, which oblige an insurer to pay a cash indemnity up to the policy limit but do not, as a general rule, require the insurer to perform or guarantee repair work itself. Article 2494 permits an insurer to elect to carry out repairs directly, in which case it assumes responsibility for their quality, but no evidence showed Intact had exercised that option here.

The contract between the homeowners and Toitures Supérieures was a contract of enterprise governed by articles 2098, 2100, 2102, 2104, 2107, and 2109 of the Civil Code. These provisions require a contractor to act in its client's best interests, follow industry standards, disclose useful information about the work before the contract is formed, flag any unsuitability of materials supplied by the client, and justify any price increase by showing the additional work was unforeseeable at the time of contracting. Articles 2110, 2111, and 2120 address acceptance of completed work and a one-year warranty against defects discovered at or after delivery.

Because the roofing contract, though tied to an immovable, was found to be a consumer contract for renovation services, the Consumer Protection Act applied in its entirety, including articles 219 and 272, which prohibit false or misleading representations to consumers and entitle a consumer to punitive damages where the statute is breached. Article 1621 of the Civil Code sets out the factors governing the quantum of punitive damages, and articles 1607 and 1611 govern compensatory damages generally.

Reasoning and analysis

On the claim against Intact, the court held that an insurer's duty under a damage insurance policy is to indemnify, not to guarantee construction quality, unless it chooses to take charge of the repairs itself, which Intact never did. The evidence showed the homeowners, not Intact, selected the contractor, negotiated with it, and controlled payment; Intact's cheques were issued to the homeowners directly, except for one payment sent to the contractor with the homeowners' express authorization. The court found no fault by the adjuster and held that Intact had reasonably refused to fund items it considered improvements to the property rather than storm-related repairs, including a structural correction behind the chimney and snow guards for a shed unrelated to the tree damage. The action against Intact was therefore dismissed in full, with costs.

On the claim against Toitures Supérieures, the court found that the widespread, permanent folds and bumps across all eight roof sections constituted a genuine construction defect rather than an unavoidable "oil canning" effect, as argued by the contractor's engineering expert. The court preferred the evidence of the homeowners' architect, who had hands-on experience designing and supervising steel roof installations and attributed the deformations to over-tightened fastening screws, over the contractor's expert, whose experience was largely theoretical and whose alternative theory about an uneven roof deck was raised only belatedly and was inconsistent with his own position that the defect was purely inherent to the product. The court also found that Toitures Supérieures breached its statutory duty to inform the homeowners, before the contract was signed, of the foreseeable risk of surface deformation in steel panelling — a risk the manufacturer's own documentation explicitly required installers to disclose to clients. The court rejected the contractor's evidence that verbal warnings had been given, finding the homeowners' account more credible and consistent with the documentary record.

Because the defect was aesthetic rather than functional, the court declined to award the full cost of re-roofing and instead applied the range typically recognized in Quebec jurisprudence for aesthetic defects, setting compensation at 30% of the contract price. The court also found numerous additional deficiencies — inadequate flashing, an unsealed vent causing water infiltration, incomplete decking, and poor ventilation — established through uncontradicted expert evidence, and awarded the estimated cost of corrective work, increased to reflect the reality that a new contractor would need to be engaged to fix another company's work.

Turning to the counterclaim, the court rejected most of Toitures Supérieures' claims for extra costs, finding that the need to remove a second layer of shingles, modify gutters, and install snow guards on the house had been known or reasonably foreseeable to the contractor's estimator before the contract was signed, precluding a price increase under the Civil Code. Two discrete items — a structural repair behind the chimney and snow guards installed on the homeowners' shed at their request — were allowed as genuinely unforeseen or separately agreed extras. A claim for labour on the shed was dismissed for lack of supporting evidence.

The court further found Toitures Supérieures liable for damage to a rear balcony railing and to gutter guards during the works, and for abandoning construction debris on the property, awarding compensation for materials and labour the homeowners incurred correcting these issues themselves. Moral damages were awarded to each homeowner for the stress and disruption caused by the unfinished, defective work. Finally, applying the Consumer Protection Act, the court found that Plante's repeated, knowing misrepresentation that the roof deformations were temporary — when he in fact knew or should have known they were permanent and installation-related — warranted punitive damages, given the preventive function such damages serve and the ongoing practical harm the false assurance caused the homeowners.

Ruling and overall outcome

The court dismissed the homeowners' claim against Intact Assurances in its entirety, with costs in Intact's favour. Against Toitures Supérieures FP Inc., the claim was allowed in part. After netting the unpaid balance still owed to Toitures Supérieures under the roofing contract against the total damages owed to the homeowners for the roofing defect, incomplete and defective work, property damage, cleanup costs, and moral damages, the court ordered Toitures Supérieures FP Inc. to pay Gilles Gauvin and France Boislard $48,265.31, with legal interest and the statutory additional indemnity running from April 12, 2022, plus $6,000 in punitive damages (split evenly between the two homeowners) with interest running from the date of judgment. Toitures Supérieures FP Inc. was also ordered to pay costs, including the homeowners' recoverable expert fees. The homeowners were the successful party against Toitures Supérieures FP Inc.; Intact Assurances was the successful party as against the homeowners' claim.