What are the grounds of appeal against a judge's refusal to limit past maintenance arrears to one year?

The fourth ground of appeal is the trial judge's refusal to limit past maintenance to a period of one year. Counsel refers to the so called "One Year Rule" and suggests that the court should apply to the application now before the court principles developed in actions brought to enforce arrears under support orders. The cases cited by counsel are examples of courts refusing to enforce payment of arrears for more than one year because the dependants' failure to pursue a defaulting judgment debtor was regarded as hoarding her rights and inducing him to believe that performance of his obligation was not required. In Martin v. Martin, 1989 CanLII 5076 (SK QB), 24 R.F.L. (3d) 150, at pp. 153 and 155, I expressed my opinion that failure to pursue a defaulting judgment debtor is insufficient reason for cancelling maintenance arrears: "Should a judgment debtor who could have paid be forgiven his debt simply because the judgment creditor has not pursued him for payment? Apart from statutory limitation, I cannot imagine such a plea being successful in a commercial case. Why then should it succeed in a matrimonial case? I do not know why it should, but it does. "Courts have often used want of pursuit to justify cancellations of arrears, which seems to imply that there is something blameworthy in not running to ground a defaulting judgment debtor. Want of pursuit has spawned in the minds of some judges the dubious presumption that the judgment creditor, usually a wife or a mother, does not really need the support provided by the order, or worse still, that she has deliberately hatched a rather sinister plot to accumulate her credits so she can really drop heavily on the unsuspecting debtor at some future time. "There has been no unreasonable and unexplained delay by the former wife. Her modest income forbade pursuit until the state took on the cost of doing so. I can well imagine any single parent, already devastated by the failure of a marriage, lacking the heart, as well as the money, to pursue a defaulter. Even though in desperate need of support, I can understand her giving up, just for the want of peace, just for the need to avoid further stress. Under such circumstances, failure to pursue cannot be regarded as unreasonable and unexplained."