Recent Alberta court decisions highlight the importance of following the Prompt Payment and Construction Lien Act closely, particularly when it comes to lien deadlines, security and adjudication procedures.

Key takeaways for contractors and property owners

  1. Parties should comply strictly with the legislation. Courts are unlikely to be flexible with the legislation’s text.
  2. Under the reasoning of Brittania Block specifically, if security is posted with the Court to discharge a CLP, the two-year trial deadline under section 46(2) of the PPCLA no longer applies, and the lien claim supported by the security can potentially remain outstanding indefinitely. For property owners and other parties seeking to have a lien claim dismissed, the only recourse then becomes an application for dismissal under Rules 4.31 or 4.33 of the Alberta Rules of Court where security has been posted in Court.
  3. The Court has left open whether it even has jurisdiction to depart from the text of the legislation. This suggests a shift from past cases where the Court was more willing to invoke its own inherent jurisdiction to bend the mechanics of the PPCLA when fairness required it.

Recent Alberta decisions reinforce compliance with the PPCLA

The following recent Alberta court decisions illustrate how courts have approached the PPCLA's statutory requirements, particularly where parties have sought flexibility in applying them.

Lien registration deadlines: Hutterian Brethren

In Micro Collective Inc v Hutterian Brethren Church of Tschetter, 2026 ABKB 547 (“Hutterian Brethren”), the court held that a lien put into the Land Titles post office box on the registration deadline, but which was registered by the Land Titles Office only the next day, was invalid. In the earlier decision (2025 ABKB 618), the court held that it had no jurisdiction to extend the statutory deadline unless permitted by the legislation.

Though on appeal the court left open the question of whether it might have jurisdiction to extend the statutory deadline, it held that it would only do so in extraordinary circumstances, and none existed in that case. The reason for ‘extraordinary circumstances’ before court invention was consistent with the public policy interest that the registrations of Land Titles Office are trustworthy and reliable.

Security and trial deadlines: Britannia Block

In 1951789 Alberta Ltd. V Britannia Block General Partnership Inc., 2026 ABKB 283 (“Britannia Block”), the court considered an appeal of a decision striking a lien and returning the security held for that lien. In the original decision (2025 ABKB 324), the lien and its certificate of lis pendens (“CLP”) were about five years old. The owners applied to vacate the security on the basis that the value of the lien itself was invalid.

The court did not accept that argument, but rather, the court enforced section 46(2) of the PPCLA, which states that if no trial is held within two years of the date of registration of the CLP, the court can vacate the CLP and the lien to which it relates. Finding that no trial had occurred, and was not likely to occur soon, the court vacated the lien and returned the security.

On appeal, the court reinstated the security for two reasons, both of which reiterate that courts will grant very little leeway from the text.

  1. The Court found that because the owners had not specifically relied on section 46(2) in its application, the original decision had effectively ordered a remedy without proper notice to the lien claimant.
  2. The Court noted that section 46 specifically contemplates a situation where a CLP remains registered against title and the section’s purpose is thus to remove the encumbrance from the land from the certificate and lien.

Therefore, the Court concluded that section 46(2) did not apply where, as in that case, security had already been posted to remove the CLP from title. The decision reflects strict adherence to the owner’s application to vacate the lien, which did not invoke section 46(2), and to the PPCLA, which in the Court’s interpretation only permitted it to vacate the lien under section 46(2) while a CLP was still on title.

These conclusions can be critiqued. Section 46(2) is the PPCLA’s only mechanism for vacating a lien for delay in trial of the lien. Coupled with Lesenko v Wild Rose Ready Mix Ltd, 2024 ABKB 333 (“Lesenko”), which now prohibits consent orders from imposing deadlines to enforce the lien when security is paid, the Court has held that parties who post security for liens are in a worse position than those who do not.

Nowhere does the legislation suggest that those who post security ought to stand on a lesser footing or lose their rights. Moreover, reducing one of the chief time controls over prosecuting a lien arguably conflicts with the ethos of section 49(6), which requires the procedure in adjudicating lien claims to be of a summary character so far as possible.

The outcome of the Britannia Block decision is that, where there is long delay in prosecuting a lien, those who post security for the lien must wait for either three years between steps (under Rule 4.33 of the Rules of Court) or for the delay to become prejudicial (under Rule 4.31).

Filing adjudicator decisions: Watkins

Lastly, in Watkins v Ken's Propane Ltd., 2026 ABKB 631, the Court held that it had no discretion to refuse the filing of an adjudicator’s decision. The homeowners obtained an adjudicator’s decision in their favour against the lien claimant. Though they were entitled by the PPCLA to file that decision with the Court Clerk after 30 days, the Court Clerk refused to file it. The lien claimant opposed the filing of the decision, arguing the decision was unfair and unreasonable, and invoking the Court’s inherent jurisdiction under the Judicature Act.

Once more adhering to the text of the PPCLA, the Court held that those arguments would have belonged to an application for judicial review, but the lien claimant’s deadline for judicial review had passed. Whether or not the Court had jurisdiction to refuse the filing of the adjudicator’s decision, the Court declined to use it.

How recent decisions compare with earlier case law

In each of these cases, the Court was unwilling to bend the PPCLA’s mechanics via analogies, equities or its inherent jurisdiction. One wonders how the present Court would interpret cases like TRG Developments Corp. v. Kee Installations Ltd., 2015 ABCA 187, in which the Court of Appeal upheld the reinstatement of a lien originally dismissed because the claimant had failed to register a CLP within the 180-day deadline.

There, the owner was found to be estopped from having the Land Titles Office dismiss the lien because it had called into question the validity of the lien before the 180-day deadline via an application to dismiss the lien, then adjourned that application until after the 180-day deadline had passed. There was “no need to file a CLP”, despite the legislation’s clear requirement, because the owner had already filed an application to determine the validity of the lien.

Similarly, in Boulevard Real Estate Equities Ltd v 1851514 Alberta Ltd, 2015 ABQB 619, the Court allowed a lien claimant to re-register its lien out of time because the owner had induced the claimant to remove its first, timely, lien registration with promises of payment.

Two recent decisions have cited TRG Developments. The first is Lesenko, above, which declined to decide whether it had discretion to reinstate the liens in question under the TRG principles because it found that the consent order under which the lien was vacated in the first place was void. The second is Hutterian Brethren, which declined to confirm the holding in TRG that the Court has authority to reinstate a lien after the legislation states that it has “ceased to exist.” If the Court had such jurisdiction, said Hutterian Brethren, then TRG and cases like it were “exceptional.”

What this means for construction lien practice

These recent decisions suggest that Alberta courts may be increasingly reluctant to depart from the PPCLA's statutory requirements, even where earlier case law has allowed greater flexibility.

If you have any questions, please contact the authors or a member of Gowling WLG’s Construction and Infrastructure teams.