Ontario's Court of Appeal has handed Intact Insurance a win, ruling that reporting a crash is not the same as claiming accident benefits.

The driver reported his February 13, 2019 crash to Intact Insurance Company the very next day. He did not apply for statutory accident benefits until December 12, 2020.

Intact first approved the claim - then reversed course, arguing the application came too late, and cut off benefits on April 14, 2022. The Licence Appeal Tribunal sided with Intact on December 22, 2023, finding the driver had missed the seven-day notice requirement in section 32(1) of the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule. His request for reconsideration failed on May 21, 2024.

The Divisional Court disagreed. On February 7, 2025, it ruled that telling Intact about the crash was notice enough, and said insurers should ask more questions once they learn about an accident.

The Ontario Trial Lawyers Association, an intervener in the case, pushed the appeal court to go further: insurers, it argued, should have a duty to ask accident victims about injuries once notified of a crash, in keeping with the consumer-protection goals of the Schedule. That argument went nowhere too - the panel found no support for it in the wording of section 32(1).

All three judges disagreed with the Divisional Court. Justice D.A. Wilson, who wrote the court's reasons, found section 32(1) clear on its face: it calls for notice that someone plans to claim benefits, not just notice that a crash happened. Other parts of the Insurance Act draw the same line, she noted, separating notice of an accident from notice of an intention to take legal action. That distinction, in her view, supports reading section 32(1) the same way.

The panel found fault with the Divisional Court for a second reason: an appeal from the tribunal can only turn on questions of law, yet the lower court had gone further, weighing in on how vulnerable accident victims are and what an average consumer would know about the Schedule. Tribunal adjudicators had already found the driver's explanation for the delay was “not credible or worthy of belief,” and that was a factual call the appellate judges said was not theirs to revisit.

The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal on September 17, 2026, putting the tribunal's original decision and its reconsideration ruling back in force. The driver's benefits claim stays denied. Intact was awarded $10,000 in costs, and the Divisional Court's costs order was wiped out.

An accident report alone still starts nothing under the Schedule. The insurer's duty to send out a benefits package only kicks in once a claimant actually says they intend to apply - within seven days of the accident, or as soon after as practicable.