Tort: The Law Lawsuits Run On

A tort is a civil wrong — an act or failure to act that injures someone and gives them the right to sue for compensation. Nearly every lawsuit a liability policy exists to pay is a tort claim: car crashes, slip-and-falls, dog bites, defamation. Tort law is the operating system lawsuits run on, and liability insurance is the product that pays the judgments it produces.

Torts come in two broad families. Negligence — carelessness that causes harm — is by far the larger one and the core of what personal liability insurance covers. Intentional torts — defamation, assault, false imprisonment, trespass — involve deliberate acts, and insurance treats them unevenly: defamation is often covered under an umbrella's personal injury extension, while intentionally harmful conduct is generally excluded. A tort is not a crime: crimes are prosecuted by the state and punished, torts are pursued by the victim and compensated. One act, like an impaired-driving crash, can be both.

Why it matters to you#

Your lawsuit exposure depends on how much tort law your province lets people use — and Canada is a patchwork. Quebec, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan run largely no-fault auto injury schemes that sharply restrict the right to sue over crash injuries. Ontario is a hybrid: lawsuits are allowed but squeezed by thresholds and deductibles. B.C. moved to a broad no-fault "Enhanced Care" model in 2021, and Alberta has legislated its own "Care-First" no-fault system (Bill 47, royal assent May 2025), set to take effect January 1, 2027. When politicians debate "tort versus no-fault," this is the stake: no-fault trades the right to sue for guaranteed benefits. But note what auto no-fault reforms don't touch — you can still be sued for what happens on your property, on vacation, online, and (in most provinces) on the road. Tort exposure never goes to zero, which is why liability limits matter everywhere in Canada.

Which provinces still let you be sued as a driver?#

Every province answers this differently, and the vocabulary genuinely differs too — "care-first" in Alberta, "Enhanced Care" in B.C., PLPD on the prairies, SAAQ in Quebec. Rather than duplicate a patchwork this detailed here, see our full province-by-province breakdown of no-fault versus tort for exactly where your province sits and what the surviving exceptions are. The short version: fewer provinces than people assume have eliminated driver lawsuits entirely, and none of them touch what happens off the road.

In practice#

• A dog bite: a tort claim in negligence — or under statutes like Ontario's Dog Owners' Liability Act — typically paid by home insurance.
• A guest hurt on your backyard rink: occupiers' liability, tort law applied to your property.
• An angry Facebook post: an intentional tort (defamation) — protection for that usually lives in an umbrella's personal injury coverage, not a base home policy.

Take the 2-minute Lawsuit Exposure Quiz →