For years, consumer contracts for services such as cellular and mobile data plans, the use of social media sites, and video streaming services contained dispute resolution provisions that required any dispute arising out of that contract to be resolved by private arbitration. While arbitration can provide a faster and sometimes more efficient resolution than litigation, those efficiencies often come at an increased cost to the parties. When the dispute is between an individual and a large corporation, the cost of arbitration can make pursuing the dispute prohibitively expensive for an individual plaintiff, effectively shutting them out of any venue to have their claim heard.1
To address those issues, in March 2025, the BC Legislature amended the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act, SBC 2004, c 2, to prohibit the use of mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer contracts. The amendments contained transition provisions to void mandatory arbitration clauses contained in existing contracts, but does voiding such clauses provide a defence to an application to stay a court action that was commenced before the new legislation came into force?
In Vandenbosch v Rogers Communications Canada Inc., 2026 BCCA 102, the BC Court of Appeal affirmed that the March 2025 amendments to the Act apply retrospectively but not retroactively. In other words, the amendments void arbitration clauses in existing consumer contracts, but do not provide parties who are engaged in disputes that pre-date the new legislation with a complete defence to an application to stay their BC Supreme Court action in favour of arbitration.
The Facts
From 2015 until at least 2023, the Plaintiff was a cellular and mobile data customer of Rogers Communications Canada Inc.. The Plaintiff’s relationship with Rogers was governed by Rogers’ standard terms of service, which included a provision requiring any claims or disputes between them to be resolved by arbitration.
In June 2023, the Plaintiff commenced an action in the BC Supreme Court against Rogers and Match Transact Inc. (Match), a Rogers retailer, alleging that Rogers and Match allowed the Plaintiff’s bitcoin wallet to be stolen by hackers, resulting in substantial losses.
On December 8, 2023, Rogers applied for a stay of proceedings in favour of arbitration pursuant to the mandatory arbitration clause contained in its terms of service with the Plaintiff. Match also filed an application to stay the Action on May 14, 2024. The application to stay the Plaintiff’s claim commenced on November 7, 2024 but did not conclude. Further hearings were scheduled for April and May, 2025.
However, on March 31, 2025, before the conclusion of Roger’s stay application, the Legislature amended the Act to prohibit the use of mandatory arbitration clauses in consumer contracts like the Plaintiff’s agreement with Rogers (the Amendments). The Amendments read as follows:
Definitions
14.1 (1) In this Division:
"consumer contract" means a contract relating to a consumer transaction;
"dispute resolution term or acknowledgment" means a term or acknowledgment in a contract that requires or has the effect of requiring that a dispute in relation to a matter arising out of the contract be submitted to arbitration or another dispute resolution process.
Dispute resolution and class proceeding term or acknowledgment prohibited — consumer
14.3 (1) A supplier must not include a dispute resolution term or acknowledgment . . . in a consumer contract.
(2) A dispute resolution term or acknowledgment . . . in a consumer contract is void.
(3) Subsections (1) and (2) do not prevent the parties to a consumer contract from agreeing, after a dispute arising out of the contract arises, to submit the dispute to arbitration or another dispute resolution process.
. . .
Transitional - prohibited contract terms
203.001 Division 4 of Part 2 applies to contracts entered into before, on or after the coming into force of that Division.
Accordingly, the Plaintiff took the position that the Amendments applied retroactively to void the mandatory arbitration clause in her contract with Rogers and constituted a complete defence to Rogers’ and Match’s applications to stay her claim.
The Law
This case turned on the Court’s interpretation of the Amendments. In short, the question was whether the Amendments were retrospective (applying to existing contracts, but only to disputes arising after the Amendments came into force) or retroactive (applying to disputes that existed before the Amendments came into effect).
At first instance, the BC Supreme Court2 applied the following cannons of statutory interpretation to assess the question:
- Statutory interpretation starts with the language of the statute, but also involves an analysis of the context and purpose of the legislation;3
- External interpretive aids such as Hansard evidence4 should be used only where the statute exhibits genuine ambiguity between multiple reasonable interpretation;5
- There is a strong presumption that the legislature does not intend for laws to apply retroactively;6
- The presumption against retroactivity can be displaced only where the legislation is specifically aimed at protecting the public from singular and identifiable risks, or by clear statutory language that it is to apply retroactively.7
The Supreme Court held that the text of the Amendments did not include any clear language to indicate that they were intended to apply retroactively. This conclusion was bolstered by the Hansard evidence, in which the Attorney General was recorded in parliamentary debate explaining that the Amendments were retrospective, but not retroactive.
As such, the Supreme Court rejected the Plaintiff’s position that the Amendments constituted a defence to Rogers’ and Match’s stay application and stayed the action in favour of arbitration.
The BC Court of Appeal affirmed the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Amendments and upheld the stay of proceedings.
Key Takeaways
The decision in Vandenbosch has important implications for both consumers and service providers. It makes clear that the Amendments to the Act do not provide litigants in ongoing disputes with a defence to an application to stay their claims in favour of arbitration. Nor do they provide litigants whose claims were previously stayed an opportunity to re-litigate those applications based on the new law.
Instead, the Amendments void mandatory arbitration provisions in existing consumer contracts which have not yet given rise to disputes. The Amendments allow Plaintiffs to prosecute claims arising out of consumer contracts after March 31, 2025 in the BC Supreme Court rather than by arbitration, which may level the financial playing field (somewhat) between individual plaintiff consumers and corporate defendants and improve access to justice.
For more information on the issues discussed in this article, please contact Ben.
1. For example, see Uber Technologies Inc. v Heller, 2020 SCC 16, paras 7-11, 93-99.
2. Reported at 2025 BCSC 1199.
3. Bell ExpressVu Limited Partnership v Rex, 2002 SCC 42, at para 26.
4. A record of parliamentary debate over the language and purpose of legislation.
6. Lin v Weng, 2022 ONCA 367.
7. Barbour v University of British Columbia, 2010 BCCA 63, at para 22.