ARIHQ v. Santé Québec, 2026 QCCS 1360

What happened

ARIHQ v. Santé Québec is a challenge to an arbitral award. The Association des ressources intermédiaires d'hébergement du Québec (ARIHQ), which represents intermediate residential care resources, and one member, operating as Centre de Santé Osman, disputed retroactive remuneration with a regional health establishment now part of Santé Québec. Their national agreement requires a written disagreement notice within 90 days, a deadline it describes as strict. The ARIHQ sent its notice in August 2024, almost three years after the establishment refused payment; the claim was estimated at $1,225,000.

The establishment moved for preliminary dismissal. Arbitrator Michel A. Jeanniot, chosen from a closed list of ten names annexed to the agreement, heard the parties for half a day and, on August 8, 2025, dismissed the claim as out of time. The ARIHQ and Osman each applied to annul the award, and the two proceedings were joined.

What the court did

Justice Martin F. Sheehan rejected the public-policy ground. The applicants argued that the award enforced a contractual limitation period shorter than the three years allowed by article 2884 of the Civil Code. The judge held that even an error of law on a public-order provision is not a ground for annulment and that the result was not contrary to public order in any event.

He accepted the second ground: failure to follow the arbitral procedure under article 646 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The court traced each authority the award relied on:

• a doctrinal article attributed to Frédéric Bachand could not be found;
• three appellate and superior court decisions cited for the validity of contractual forfeiture clauses did not exist, and each neutral citation led to an unrelated decision;
• SOQUIJ confirmed that an arbitral award cited as Arbitrage CHU Ste-Justine (D.T.E. 2018-30) did not exist, and the decision bearing that reference did not support the proposition.

These were the only doctrinal or case authorities the award used as legal support. The establishment argued that, without expert evidence, the court should not find AI use. The judge answered that the civil standard is the balance of probabilities and that the nonexistence of the decisions had been proved. His conclusion was framed as delegation, not as a finding about any named tool: "La preuve prépondérante mène donc à la conclusion que l’autorité de l’Arbitre a été déléguée et qu’il a abdiqué à son rôle de revoir le résultat." In this record's translation: the preponderant evidence therefore leads to the conclusion that the arbitrator's authority was delegated and that he abdicated his role of reviewing the result. The court annulled the award, ordered the parties to choose a new arbitrator within 60 days, and awarded legal costs.

Where it stands

The judgment is dated April 22, 2026. The judge limited its reach: "La présente conclusion n’implique pas que toute Sentence qui cite des références erronées ou qui utilise l’intelligence artificielle comme outil de rédaction devrait subir le même sort." In this record's translation: the conclusion does not imply that every award citing erroneous references or using AI as a drafting tool should suffer the same fate. He added that researchers, clerks and help with citations remain permissible so long as responsibility for drafting stays with the decision-maker. The judgment does not record any explanation from the arbitrator. Whether an appeal was taken, or a new arbitrator chosen, was not located as of October 21, 2026.

ARIHQ v. Santé Québec belongs with the record's other decisions about adjudicators, including FJL v. TGO in South Africa and Gadiya v. Union of India. In the ARIHQ case the decision-maker was privately chosen, and the court located the defect in that choice: having selected him, the parties were entitled to his decision.

The obligation it engaged

Clause 2 of the Standard, non-delegation, is the clause the ARIHQ reasoning tracks most closely. The award was annulled because the person the parties chose did not, on the evidence, exercise the judgment they bargained for. Clause 4, checkability before adoption, explains how the defect surfaced: every neutral citation could be looked up, and every one failed.

Clause 3, independent authority, and clause 7, contemporaneous record, complete the picture. Nothing in the judgment shows a drafting record that could have rebutted the inference of delegation. The lesson for an expert witness is direct: an expert, like an arbitrator, is retained for personal judgment, and an expert who cannot show that the analysis is his own invites the conclusion the court reached in ARIHQ.

Sources

• SOQUIJ (Société québécoise d'information juridique) · April 22, 2026
  ARIHQ c. Santé Québec, 2026 QCCS 1360, Jugement sur demande en annulation d'une sentence arbitrale

What could not be confirmed

The judgment is in French; the translations here are this record's own. Paragraph numbering in the research note was reconstructed from the SOQUIJ HTML copy, which does not render paragraph numbers reliably, and has not been checked against the original Word file. The court did not name an AI tool; its conclusion is that the arbitrator's authority was delegated, reached on the balance of probabilities. No appeal or new award was located as of 2026-10-21.