Parliament passed on July 27, 2020, the Time Limits and Other Periods Act (COVID-19) (Time Limits Act), which we summarized in a previous bulletin. Briefly, the Time Limits Act automatically suspends statutory time limits for federal civil proceedings for six months and grants federal ministers the power to issue orders extending statutory and regulatory time limits in a range of areas.
In recent weeks, federal courts have clarified how they intend to apply the Time Limits Act to their own internal rules establishing procedural deadlines for ongoing civil court cases. In addition, a number of federal ministers have availed themselves of their authority under the Time Limits Act to extend statutory and regulatory time limits.
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