The OCA called the case a ‘textbook illustration of the inappropriate use of… contempt power’
A panel for the Ontario Court of Appeal has unanimously overturned a contempt order that a lower court issued against the province’s architect licensing body, calling the contempt order “so dismissive and derogatory that it cannot simply be ignored” and “a textbook illustration of the inappropriate use of the Superior Court’s contempt power.”
Released last week, the appellate court's decision in Association of Architectural Technologists of Ontario v. Ontario Association of Architects tossed out the contempt order and an associated $30,000 fine against the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA).
The contempt order had been issued by Justice Lee Akazaki at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, who was presiding over a dispute between the OAA and the Association of Architectural Technologists of Ontario (AATO). According to Akazaki, the OAA had violated an agreement the two parties reached in 2023, in which the OAA had agreed to stop issuing licenses to architectural technologists. Once licensed, architectural technologists could provide a limited range of architectural services to the public.
In its ruling, however, the OCA panel said that Akazaki’s analysis of the dispute was flawed, and that the judge used excessively derogatory language in his contempt finding.
“It is one thing for a court to determine, in an appropriate case, that an organization such as the OAA has fallen short of its statutory obligations and acted without jurisdiction,” the OCA panel stated. “It is quite another to criticize the organization for: ‘perverting its core mandate’; being ‘unconscious to the seriousness of the breach’; engaging in an ‘absurd pretense’; conducting itself in a manner that ‘may be unprecedented in Canadian law’; using a statutory committee as ‘a false cover for issuing licences prohibited by the court order’; and being ‘prepared to compromise its public-protection mandate to perform an end run around the court order.’”
The OCA panel added that “there was no basis for the use of such language in relation to the actions of the OAA in this case, since the organization appears to have acted throughout in good faith and in a manner which it genuinely believed was in furtherance of its statutory mandate to protect and serve the public interest.”
The dispute dates back to 2023, when the OAA and the AATO agreed that the former would stop issuing licenses for architectural technologists. The two parties had reached the agreement after the AATO, a voluntary professional association for architectural technologists, argued the OAA had no authority to issue the licenses.
After the agreement was finalized, the OAA sent notices to 150 individuals to whom it had previously issued architectural technologist licenses, telling them their licenses were no longer valid. The OAA added that it was actively seeking changes to Ontario law that would allow it to issue the licenses again in the future, and that under current Ontario law, each of the individuals could apply for an architect’s license via an alternative process even if they didn’t meet the traditional requirements to become architects.
After they received this notice, 39 of the 150 individuals pursued this alternative path to licensing. Twelve of them received licenses.
The next year, the AATO sought a court order finding that OAA was in contempt of their 2023 agreement. The AATO argued that despite the agreement, the OAA was still issuing architectural technologist licenses through the alternative licensing process.
Approximately five months later, before the AATO’s contempt motion was argued in court, the Ontario legislature amended the law to permit the OAA to issue architectural technologist licenses.
Presiding over the dispute, Akazaki nevertheless issued a contempt order against OAA, arguing that the primary purpose of the punishment was to “compel obedience with court orders and to uphold the court’s authority”. He added that a significant penalty against the OAA was necessary because the licensing body had disobeyed the 2023 agreement by “by perverting its core mandate.”
In its decision, the OCA panel found that Akazaki had applied the wrong legal test in interpreting the 2023 agreement, and that the OAA had been complying with Ontario law when it informed the 150 individuals who lost their licenses that there was an alternative process for them to pursue licensing.
The OCA panel also took issue with how the judge characterized the OAA’s conduct in the case.
“Reputation plays a central role in human societies, and it is well established that ‘reputation is one of the most valuable assets a person or a business can possess,’” the panel said. “Reputation is equally important to regulatory organizations such as the OAA, whose effectiveness ultimately depends upon public confidence that it is acting in the public interest.”
The panel added, “It is difficult to conceive of the circumstances which would justify the use of such dismissive and derogatory language in describing the exercise of statutory powers by a professional regulator.”
The OCA has criticized Akazaki’s use of language on at least one other occasion. In 2024, a unanimous panel for the appellate court called out the judge’s “mocking and inflammatory tone” in a family law ruling he authored, noting that such a tone was “inappropriate in a judicial decision.”
Counsel for the parties did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
