Though well established in the US, class action litigation is relatively new to Canada. Quebec was the first Canadian jurisdiction to allow a group of individual plaintiffs to proceed as one against a defendant or group of defendants in the 1978 amendments to the Code of Civil Procedure (Articles 999-1051). More recently Ontario and BC have each enacted a Class Proceedings Act (1992 and 1995, respectively) to set guidelines for collective actions.
The reality of the Class Actions Bar across Canada would appear to be that plaintiffs' work is concentrated in the hands of a few, usually small or medium-sized firms (such as Toronto's McGowan & Company, London's Siskind, Cromarty, Ivey & Dowler LLP or Windsor's Sutts Strosberg LLP in Ontario; the Montreal firms of Lauzon Bélanger, Sylvestre Charbonneau & Fafard, and Unterberg, Labelle, Lebeau & Morgan in Quebec, or Vancouver's Branch MacMaster, Camp Fiorante Matthews, Church & Company, and Klein, Lyons in B.C.), while defendants' work is much more diffuse and is generally done as part of a wider commercial litigation practice.