A Manitoba judge has dismissed two former synagogue members’ attempt to overturn their expulsion, finding that the membership dispute did not involve the civil, property or economic rights needed to support the court remedies they sought.
In Eviatar et al. v. Congregation Etz Chayim, 2026 MBKB 146, Justice Toews ruled on October 23, 2026 that the congregation’s statutory corporate status did not, by itself, give the applicants access to relief under Manitoba’s Corporations Act. Each side was ordered to bear its own costs.
The dismissal came with an express qualification about the disputed events. The judge did not accept that either applicant’s words, including David Hoult’s letter criticizing synagogue security measures, were intentionally used to communicate a threat. He found that Hoult meant to explain his objections to those measures, not to threaten violence against congregants.
A membership dispute with competing accounts
Eviatar and Hoult sought a declaration that the termination of their membership in Congregation Etz Chayim was invalid, orders requiring compliance with its bylaws and production of membership-related documents, and solicitor-and-client costs. They argued that the bylaws did not authorize termination, that the board had not approved it, and that they had not been given an opportunity to respond before the decision took effect.
The applicants said they had participated in the Winnipeg congregation and its predecessor since 1994. They attributed the dispute to disagreements about security measures and their views on Israel’s actions in Gaza. The congregation, a non-share corporation operating a synagogue, emphasized its safety concerns and its responsibility to govern the religious community.
The congregation argued that the matter concerned internal religious governance rather than an enforceable civil or property right. It also disputed the applicants’ procedural-fairness complaints. Those were the parties’ competing positions: the judge said it was unnecessary to resolve their materially different factual accounts or make credibility findings to decide the application on the legal grounds he identified.
Membership alone did not establish an enforceable right
The applicants relied in part on provisions of the Corporations Act dealing with membership and bylaws. Their argument was that the absence of a bylaw permitting termination made the expulsion invalid. They also sought to use the Act’s oppression remedy, which allows court intervention to address specified forms of unfair treatment of corporate stakeholders.
Toews relied on a Manitoba Court of Appeal ruling reproduced in his reasons. That ruling says courts do not intervene in voluntary-association membership disputes where membership grants no civil or property right, even where a breach of natural justice is alleged.
Applying that principle, he found no underlying legal dispute of the kind that would justify intervention under the membership provisions. Religious groups are free to determine their membership and rules, he said, subject to court involvement where necessary to resolve an underlying legal dispute. The ruling therefore turned on the rights asserted in this application, rather than a finding that religious organizations are beyond the reach of the courts.
Corporate status did not supply the missing interest
The oppression-remedy argument raised a further question: could the applicants qualify as people entitled to invoke that remedy? They were not security holders, directors or officers of the congregation. They therefore relied on section 231(d), which allows a court to recognize another person as a proper applicant.
Toews held that the relevant provisions protect legally recognizable interests, typically financial, proprietary or economic ones. In this case, the applicants’ membership did not carry an economic or property right that would allow the court to fashion the requested oppression remedy. The fact that the congregation had been created by statute did not change that conclusion.
The judge distinguished such a membership dispute from a claim involving a legally protected financial interest. He gave the example of an executor advancing an estate’s claim where the deceased had held a security interest in a religious organization’s assets or property.
He also supplied an alternative reason for refusing relief: even if the legislation left him discretion to recognize an applicant without a financial or property interest, he would not exercise it in what he characterized as a fundamentally religious dispute among congregation members. The Act’s restraining and compliance provisions likewise did not authorize the remedy sought in these circumstances.
The application was dismissed without a costs award to either side. That outcome did not reverse the judge’s separate finding about the letter: the refusal to intervene in the membership dispute was not a finding that the applicants had intended to threaten violence.
Source: 2026 MBKB 146.
