Jurisdiction Archives - Arbitration Matters

August 24, 2026

Alberta – Court Dismisses Application to Decide Scope of Unwritten Arbitration Agreement – #957

In 1775773 Alberta Ltd. v Hill, 2026 ABKB 511, the Application Judge considered the limits of the Court’s jurisdiction to determine the scope of an arbitration. The case arose in circumstances where the parties had agreed that all but one of the issues between them would be arbitrated but had not entered into a written arbitration submission agreement or otherwise consented to the Court determining whether the remaining issue should be referred to arbitration. The Application Judge refused to refer any of the issues to arbitration, finding that there was no “meeting of the minds” on the submission agreement and that an arbitration agreement could not be implied from the parties’ Unanimous Shareholders Agreement (the “USA”). He also found that he lacked authority to refer the disputed issue to arbitration because the parties had not consented to the Court determining whether it should be arbitrated.

June 29, 2026June 30, 2026

Ontario – ISDS award set aside on jurisdictional and bias grounds – #950

In Grace et al v United Mexican States, 2026 ONSC 2104, the Court set aside an arbitral award issued under the NAFTA on the basis that: (i) the tribunal wrongly declined jurisdiction; and (ii) one of the arbitrators had failed to disclose his involvement as counsel for a state in an arbitration involving similar issues, which gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias. This case focused, among other things, on the continuing duty of arbitrators to make disclosure.

March 11, 2026March 11, 2026

Ontario – Parties must pay arbitrator as part of good faith contractual performance – #937

In Ongko (Boswell) v. Ongko, 2025 ONSC 7235, the applicant was precluded from bringing her set-aside application. She was not only time-barred from doing so because she commenced the application after the statutory 30-day period, but the Court also held that it lacked jurisdiction to set aside an award and to remove an arbitrator for bias where a party fails to comply with the arbitrator challenge requirements of the Arbitration Act, 1991, SO 1991, c 17 and the terms of their arbitration agreement, which provided for a mandatory challenge process if either party had concerns about the arbitrator’s neutrality. The applicant elected not to proceed with the challenge before the arbitrator after she refused to pay the arbitrator’s fees. She then chose not to participate in the arbitration. The Court made clear that parties must continue to pay the arbitrator’s fees to complete the contractually agreed dispute resolution process. It also found that there was also no procedural unfairness stemming from her own choices.