Is reliance an element of the cause of action?

In fact, whether the certification judge’s assumption was valid was irrelevant to the damages trial. When the certification judge referred to reliance in his 2010 decision that decided the composition of the class, he was considering three claims by the plaintiffs. One of those claims was negligent misrepresentation, where reasonable reliance is an element of the cause of action: Queen v. Cognos Inc., 1993 CanLII 146 (SCC), [1993] 1 S.C.R. 87, at p. 110. Following certification, in the common issues trial, the trial judge determined, this court agreed, and the trial judge restated in the damages decision, that it is not necessary to prove reliance in order to establish an unfair practice claim under the Consumer Protection Act. Therefore, once the plaintiffs elected to pursue only their Consumer Protection Act claim at the damages trial, reliance on the misrepresentation was no longer in issue.