The Ontario Court of Appeal considers the presumption of consistent expression in contractual interpretation
The Ontario Court of Appeal recently had occasion, in Baffinland Iron Mines LP v. Tower-EBC G.P., S.E.N.C., to examine a rarely considered rule of contractual interpretation – the presumption of consistent expression. This is the presumption “that language in a contract is used consistently, with the same words meaning the same thing and, by corollary, the use of different words indicating an intention to refer to different things.”