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Statutory Interpretation - Use of Dictionaries. Lundin Mining Corp. v. Markowich
In Lundin Mining Corp. v. Markowich (SCC, 2025) the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed an appeal, this brought against the allowing of an appeal by the Ont CA against a Superior Court order which "dismissed the motions for leave to commence an action under the Securities Act and for class certification".
Here the court cautiously considers the use of dictionary definitions in statutory interpretation:[65] At the outset, I stress that it is not unusual or necessarily wrong to start the process of statutory interpretation with a dictionary definition. To understand the meaning of undefined words, judges and lawyers often look to dictionaries “as a starting point in the interpretive process” (Ontario v. Canadian Pacific Ltd., 1995 CanLII 112 (SCC), [1995] 2 S.C.R. 1031, at para. 67).
[66] At the same time, dictionary definitions cannot determine the meaning of legislation (see, e.g., Telus Communications Inc. v. Federation of Canadian Municipalities, 2025 SCC 15, at para. 43). There are several reasons why courts should be cautious when relying on them.
[67] First, the meaning of words “may differ significantly from one dictionary to the next”, and “even minor differences in the way words are defined can make a difference in the outcome of a case” (R. Sullivan, The Construction of Statutes (7th ed. 2022), at § 3:03[3]).
[68] Second, and more fundamentally, dictionary definitions focus on the typical usage of words, rather than on the full range of intended application of a word that the legislature expressly left undefined. To quote Professor Ruth Sullivan, “dictionary definitions . . . communicate the senses of a word rather than its range of possible reference — its connotation or intension rather than its denotation or extension” (§ 3:03[3]). As she explains:Connotative or inten[s]ional meaning focuses on the common or typical attributes found in the usage of a given sense of a word .... Denotative or extensive meaning refers to the things to which a word may correctly be applied. Since the denotation of words is unpredictable and indeterminate, it cannot be fully captured in a definition. [§ 3:03[3]] [69] Third, dictionary definitions “can say very little about the meaning of a word as used in a particular context” (Sullivan, at § 3:02[4]; see also P.-A. Côté and M. Devinat, Interprétation des lois (5th ed. 2021), at para. 982, citing R. v. Monney, 1999 CanLII 678 (SCC), [1999] 1 S.C.R. 652, at para. 26). Under the modern principle, interpreting “a phrase in a statute does not simply involve transposing a dictionary definition of each word. The phrase has to be construed according to its context and the underlying purpose of the provision” (A. Burrows, Thinking About Statutes: Interpretation, Interaction, Improvement (2018), at pp. 6-7, quoting An Informer v. A Chief Constable, [2012] EWCA Civ 197, [2013] Q.B. 579, at para. 67).
[70] Care must therefore be taken in using dictionaries to give definitive meaning to terms that a legislature has intentionally left undefined.
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