May 27, 2025

The SCC Leave Project: Predictions for May 29, 2025

Here’s a look at the leave application decisions that the Supreme Court of Canada will be releasing on May 29, 2025.

Each week, we’ll be providing a short blog post that summarizes some of the upcoming cases and gives a prediction of the probability that leave will be granted. These predictions will be based on our proprietary machine learning model and dataset of every leave application decision released by the Supreme Court of Canada from January 1, 2018 onward.

Each week, we’ll group cases into four categories:

  • Cases to Watch – These are cases where our model predicts greater than a 25% chance that leave will be granted. These cases have a much better than average chance that leave will be granted. While this doesn’t mean that all of them will get leave, they are worth watching as strong candidates.
  • Possible Contenders – These are cases where our model predicts between a 5% and 25% chance that leave will be granted. These cases have an average to somewhat above-average chance of getting leave. While most cases in this category won’t get leave, on average, we expect to see a healthy minority of cases in this category being granted leave.
  • Unlikely Contenders – These are cases where our model predicts between a 1% and 5% chance that the case will get leave. The safe bet is against leave being granted in these cases, but we do expect to see it from time to time.
  • Long-Shots – These are cases where our model predicts a less than 1% chance that the case will get leave. Although it will happen from time to time, it would be an outlier for our model for these cases to be granted leave. We will not be providing summaries for these cases.

If this is your first time reading our weekly SCC leave predictions blog, have a look at an explanation and caveats about our model here.

 

THIS WEEK’S CASES

There are nine leave application decisions coming out on May 29, 2025. Our model only predicts the probabilities of successful leave applications in cases where leave was sought from the Court of Appeal. We will not comment or provide a prediction on cases where leave was sought directly from a Superior Court decision or on cases in which we are involved. That leaves nine cases in which we’ll give a prediction.

You can find a detailed summary of all of the cases that are up for leave decisions this week here.

 

Possible Contenders

Richard Leonard Walker v His Majesty the King

  • Our Model’s Prediction: This case has a 19% chance of getting leave.

Commissioner of Nunavut as represented by the Government of Nunavut and Government of Nunavut as represented by the Attorney General v Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, Bernice Tujjaaqtuqaq Clarke and Lily Anna Maniapik 

  • Our Model’s Prediction: This case has a 14% chance of getting leave.

Samsung Electronics Canada Inc v Tracey Arial

  • Our Model’s Prediction: This case has a 12% chance of getting leave.

Apple Canada Inc v Tracey Aria

  • Our Model’s Prediction: This case has a 12% chance of getting leave.

Power Workers’ Union v Attorney General of Canada

  • Our Model’s Prediction: This case has a 6% chance of getting leave.

Marko Maric v His Majesty the King 

  • Our Model’s Prediction: This case has a 6% chance of getting leave.

 

Long-Shots

Lonnie Mercelle Murphy v His Majesty the King

  • Our Model’s Prediction: This case has a less than 1% chance of getting leave.

Feng Wang v Min Li 

  • Our Model’s Prediction: This case has a less than 1% chance of getting leave.

Ahmed Debouk v His Majesty the King

  • Our Model’s Prediction: This case has a less than 1% chance of getting leave.