The parties could not agree if the Plaintiff’s Application to certify the Action as a Class Action, and the Defendants’ Application to stay the Action, should be heard together or separately. The Plaintiff argued that the Applications should be heard together. The Defendants argued that Rule 1.4 provides the Court with discretion to hear Applications “in the order necessary to advance the purpose and intention of the [R]ules” and that pursuant to Rule 1.2, one of those purposes was to provide a means to justly and fairly resolve the claim in a timely and cost-effective way.

Eamon J. noted that he need not hear the Certification Application first, and that the decision of whether to hear Applications together or separately should be based on the principles of efficiency, judicial economy, and fairness. His Lordship noted that the stay Application “overlaps the certification application”, meaning that bifurcating the Applications would result in potential delay through multiple Appeals and “litigation by instalment”. Conversely, the Certification Application would be costly to the parties, and there was an ongoing Saskatchewan Action which was supposed to be discontinued before the Alberta Action had proceeded (which had not occurred yet). His Lordship concluded that the most fair and efficient decision was to permit the Defendants to make their stay argument before hearing the Plaintiff’s Certification Application.