Does the oppression remedy work differently for a public company shareholder than a private one in Ontario?

The oppression remedy under Ontario's Business Corporations Act applies to both public and private corporations, but in practice it plays out quite differently between the two. In closely held private corporations, reasonable expectations are often shaped by informal understandings, family relationships, or a shareholder's active role in the business, and courts are generally more willing to look behind the corporation's formal documents to what the parties actually understood. In a public company with many shareholders and formal governance structures, reasonable expectations tend to be assessed more against the corporation's public disclosure, governance policies, and securities regulatory framework, since informal personal understandings are far less realistic in that context.

Public company oppression claims are also less common relative to the number of shareholders involved, partly because minority shareholders in public companies typically have other avenues, like selling their shares on the market or engaging securities regulators, that private company shareholders locked into an illiquid, closely held corporation don't have. That difference in practical alternatives is itself something courts can weigh when considering what remedy is appropriate.