Prior Cases

Monaghan JA noted that in amending s. 31(1) in response to the Craig decision so as to deny farming losses where farming was a subordinate source of income, Parliament chose not to list factors that were relevant to determining whether farming was a subordinate source of income but that relevant factors were listed in Craig and Moldowan. She indicated at (para. 121) that “[t]his suggests Parliament was satisfied with that aspect of those decisions.”

The Court applied (at p. 5192) the principle that "in determining the legislative intent behind the current wording in s. 32, it is useful to examine the judicial interpretation given to the provision that came before it."

After noting that when Parliament amended what now is s. 232(1)(e) without altering the wording of the portion of that definition which had been commented upon in Deputy Attorney General of Canada v. Brown, [1965] S.C.R. 84, Mandel J. then noted that he was fortified in the conclusion he already had reached by the presumption found in Ex Parte Campbell, L.R. 5 Ch. App. 703 at 706 that:

"'Where once certain words in an Act of Parliament have received a judicial construction in one of the Superior Courts, and the Legislature has repeated them without any alteration in a subsequent statute, I conceive that the Legislature must be taken to have used them according to the meaning which a Court of competent jurisdiction has given to them.'"

In interpreting the word "perquisite" found in the Inland Revenue Ordinance (Hong Kong), Lord Templeman applied the "logical and sensible principle that expressions employed in British legislation and authorities on the meaning of such expressions are of assistance in construing identical expressions in Hong Kong legislation concerned with the same subject matter."

The enactment of s. 163(3) of the Act did not alter the interpretation which prior cases had held should be accorded to s. 152(8).

It was found that the legislature, in continuing to use the undefined word "office" in successive versions of the statute without a corrective definition, "showed a general intention to adopt the judicial interpretation of it." (Lord Wilberforce)

Before going on to find that the definition in the Interpretation Act (BC) of a "person" as including partnership did not override the common law of partnerships that the partners of a partnership had an interest in the partnership property, Hutcheon J.A. stated (at p. 401) that "there is a rule of construction of statutes that new principles are not to be introduced into any branch of the law except by clear language."