Quebec court rejects unclaimed-property route for unsubmitted Telus class-action claims

The Quebec Court of Appeal has rejected an attempt to put unsubmitted Telus class-action claims into the province's unclaimed-property system, ruling that a customer’s potential claim is not the same as an established debt payable by the company.

In Masson c. Telus Mobilité, 2026 QCCA 1288, decided September 29, 2026, the court dismissed the representatives’ appeal with legal costs. The amount of those costs was not specified.

The decision does not undo the class members’ earlier victory over excessive cancellation charges. It explains why that victory, followed by an individual claims process, did not automatically make Telus liable to pay a fixed amount to every person covered by the case.

A win over cancellation fees still required individual claims

In 2019, the appeal court found that the cancellation fees charged by Telus Mobilité and Société Telus Communications substantially exceeded the average loss the companies suffered when customers ended their contracts early.

The court ordered refunds for members who had paid more than those average losses: $226.71 for Telus Mobilité and $201.38 for Société Telus Communications. The refundable amount was the difference between the fee paid and the applicable benchmark, not the full fee and not a flat payment of either benchmark.

But the evidence did not establish how many members had paid excessive fees or the total excess collected. The court therefore ordered individual recovery rather than a collective award of a single compensation fund, and sent the matter back to the Superior Court to manage the claims.

Further proceedings established the notice and claims process. Notices were sent in June 2022, and the claims period ended June 30, 2023. The reasons say few members submitted individual claims.

In June 2024, representatives Éric Masson and Claude Gauthier asked the Superior Court to declare that the Unclaimed Property Act applied to the amounts members had not claimed. The proposal would bring those amounts within the revenue minister’s provisional administration. The Superior Court refused, and the representatives appealed.

The representatives could raise the question

Telus argued that the representatives lacked the legal interest to act for members who had not filed claims and could not seek this relief within the existing proceeding.

The appeal court rejected those preliminary objections. A representative remains responsible for advancing common questions affecting the class, even after the representative’s own claim has been paid. Earlier rulings preventing representatives from filing individual claims on other members’ behalf did not bar them from asking the court what legal status the unsubmitted claims had.

It also made sense for the judge already managing the class action to decide these connected questions. Requiring a separate proceeding before another judge would be inconsistent with proportionality and sound administration of justice.

That procedural success did not resolve the substantive issue in the representatives’ favour.

A disputed right is not an immediately payable debt

The representatives argued that the 2019 judgment had already given members debts that were fixed and due, with only payment arrangements left to complete.

Justice Judith Harvie, writing for the unanimous panel, disagreed. Individual recovery leaves issues to be resolved for each claimant. Telus could still raise permitted individual defences, including whether an arbitration clause applied to a non-consumer contract, whether an outstanding account balance could be set off, and whether a member’s bankruptcy meant the right belonged to a trustee.

The reasons note that 220 individual claims had in fact been rejected. A decision allowing a claim was required before the claimant obtained an enforceable debt.

The appeal court nevertheless corrected part of the lower court’s reasoning. A person who had not submitted a claim did not have no right at all. The person held a “litigious right” under Quebec civil law: a right that remained uncertain or open to dispute. Such a right can be a form of property, but that did not make it an unclaimed debt covered by the statute.

Unclaimed-property law did not require the minister to litigate

The court found no provision expressly bringing unsubmitted individual class-action claims within the Unclaimed Property Act. Treating them that way would require the minister to submit claims for missing people and represent their interests in litigation, without a statutory basis for doing so.

That approach would also conflict with an individual recovery process requiring members to take a positive step before the remaining questions about compensation could be decided.

Nor did the evidence establish that people who had not claimed were untraceable. Failing to receive or respond to a notice could have many explanations; it did not, by itself, satisfy the statutory requirement.

The court did not decide the effect of missing the one-year claims period under the Code of Civil Procedure, or of sending notices directly rather than formally publishing them. It found those questions unnecessary to resolve the appeal.

The result preserves the distinction between winning a common issue in a class action and establishing each member’s entitlement to payment. It does not order a new refund fund, reopen the claims period or establish that every kind of unpaid class-action compensation falls outside Quebec’s unclaimed-property law.