Senior Managing Director Bradley Heys, Managing Director Robert Patton, and Consultant Jielei Mao have released their annual report reviewing securities class actions in Canada. “Trends in Canadian Securities Class Actions: 2025 Update” contains analysis based on NERA’s proprietary database of information on securities class actions in Canada. The report covers trends in the past year’s filings and considerations for 2026.

Highlights from the report include:

•  2025 marks 20 years since the introduction of the Securities Act provisions for civil liability in respect of an issuer’s continuous disclosure obligations. In that time, there have been 154 Statutory Secondary Market cases filed in Canada, an average of about eight filings per year.
• Six new securities class actions were filed in Canada during 2025, the lowest level observed in 10 years and less than half of the 15 new cases filed in 2024.
• Five of these six 2025 filings are Statutory Secondary Market cases brought on behalf of investors in securities listed on public stock exchanges. The sixth filing involves allegations of a Ponzi scheme.
• In contrast to the US experience where there have been several cases involving cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence filed over the last two years, there has been only one filing of a case involving AI in Canada (in 2024) and no new cases involving cryptocurrency since 2022.
• Four of the six new cases were filed in Ontario, one of which was also filed in Quebec. The other two cases were filed in British Columbia and Quebec, respectively.
• Only one of the six new cases filed in Canada during 2025 had a parallel US action as of the end of the year. Seven other Canadian-domiciled companies were named as defendants in US securities class actions filed during 2025, of which only one had a parallel Canadian action as of the end of 2025 (in that case, the parallel Canadian action was filed in 2024).
• Seven Canadian securities class actions were settled during 2025, three more than the number of settlements in 2024 and matching the second highest number of settlements in any one year.
• The median settlement in 2025 was $10.0 million, slightly lower than the median settlement of $12.1 million in 2024 but seemingly continuing a modest uptick from the relatively low median settlement amounts during the period from 2018 to 2023.

Further analysis can be found in NERA’s full report. Interested readers looking for more information or who have specific questions are invited to contact the authors directly.