It is suggested that DAC identified Parliamentary intention at a too high and generalized level of abstraction

DAC found that the continuance outside Canada of a Canadian-controlled private corporation before realizing a capital gain (thereby avoiding the additional tax imposed on CCPC investment income) was abusive because it frustrated the anti-deferral objective of the CCPC regime as inferred from a broadly stated equivalence principle drawn from the 1971 budget speech of Edgar Benson, that the taxation of investment income should be the same whether received directly or through a private corporation. However, it is suggested that:

A general statement drawn from a budget speech, standing alone and untested against the subsequent legislative record, cannot discharge [the] obligation … [for] genuine engagement with the text of the relevant provisions, the structure of the legislative scheme of which they form part, and the legislative history that illuminates Parliament's choices over time.

Parliament repealed the personal corporation rules (which, by taxing domestic controlled corporations on a full look-through basis, came closest to achieving the Benson assertion) at the very moment he articulated that principle, and then enacted a refundable tax mechanism that was deliberately confined to a narrowing subset of corporations, so that resident non-Canadian corporations (RNCCs) were excluded entirely. Furthermore, as part of a policy of the preferential treatment of Canadian corporations as defined, Parliament removed the dividend tax credit entitlement on dividends paid by a resident non-Canadian corporation – and later, restricted RDTOH entitlements to CCPCs rather than all private corporations, so that an RNCC was not entitled to either a DTC or RDTOH. Furthermore, the general rate reduction in 2000 did not exclude an RNCC from accessing the reduced rate for investment income.

Thus, DAC identified Parliamentary intention at a level of abstraction that the legislative history of the integration regime and the s. 123.3 anti-deferral regime does not support and that the Canada Trustco, Copthorne and Deans Knight trilogy (which took a bottom-up approach grounded in the specific statutory mechanisms whose purposes was said to be frustrated - rather than effecting a top-down application of a statement of generalized intent) also does not support.

Neal Armstrong. Summary of Mark Brender, “The meaning of ‘clear abuse’ in GAAR jurisprudence, Corporate Structures and Groups (Federated Press), Vol. 22, No. 4, 2026, p. 3 under s. 245(4).