This practice notice provides guidance for the citation of authorities in proceedings before the Canadian International Trade Tribunal.
Parties appearing before the Tribunal can rely on authorities in support of their positions, provided they properly cite and index them in their submissions. Subrule 34(2) of the Canadian International Trade Tribunal Rules requires, in part, that parties in appeals include a table of authorities on which they intend to rely, and file and serve copies of the authorities.
The Tribunal urges parties to cite only those authorities that are reasonably necessary in the presentation of their case.
Effective immediately and applicable to all proceedings, parties are no longer required to file or serve copies of authorities that are included in the Tribunal’s list of designated online authorities (see below). Instead, they must include a table of authorities in their written submissions that includes a
- neutral citation;
- publicly accessible link to the online location of any authority; and
- pincite to the paragraph, page number, section, article, etc. to the portion of the authority relied upon.
Parties are responsible for updating links when they discover they are inaccurate or outdated.
Designated online authorities
The Tribunal’s list of designated online authorities is as follows:
- All current, freely and publicly accessible online versions of Canadian federal, provincial or territorial statutes and regulations, foreign statutes and regulations, and international treaties or other agreements (non-current, i.e., historical or repealed, versions of any of these documents must be provided in paper format);
- All decisions, determinations, statements of reasons, orders and other publications of the Tribunal publicly accessible on the Tribunal’s website or elsewhere.
- All Canadian judicial and other legal authorities publicly accessible online at the website of the Canadian Legal Information Institute, the Société québécoise d’information juridique and the Centre d’accès à l’information juridique, or elsewhere.
- All foreign judicial and other legal authorities publicly accessible online, such as the World Trade Organization.
The list of designated online authorities does not include any authorities exclusively accessible through a private, paid subscription service, such as Quicklaw, Westlaw or any other website not freely accessible by the public.