Who is liable if I slip and fall on an icy sidewalk in front of a store in Ontario?

Liability generally depends on exactly who controlled and was responsible for maintaining the specific spot where you fell, and whether they took reasonable steps to address the icy condition given what they knew or should have known about the weather at the time. If the fall happened on a private walkway that the store is responsible for maintaining, the Occupiers' Liability Act requires the store to show it had a reasonable system for inspecting and clearing snow and ice - not that the walkway was perfectly ice-free at every single moment, which is not the standard the law requires.

If the fall actually happened on a public municipal sidewalk rather than on the store's own property, a different set of considerations and a different potential defendant - the municipality - can apply instead, since municipal claims involve their own rules. Because the exact boundary between store frontage and public sidewalk is often not obvious to a pedestrian, and because who was responsible for that specific stretch can be genuinely unclear at first, documenting exactly where the fall occurred, the conditions at the time, and any visible signage or maintenance activity is one of the most useful things to do as soon as possible after a fall like this.