Town of v. St-Bruno de Montarville, [1971] SCR 623

Supreme Court of Canada

Mount Bruno Association Limited v. Town of St-Bruno de Montarville, [1971] S.C.R. 623

Date: 1971-04-27

Town of St-Bruno de Montarville Appellant;

and

Mount Bruno Association Limited Respondent.

1971: March 24; 1971: April 27.

Present: Fauteux C.J. and Abbott, Judson, Ritchie and Pigeon JJ.

ON APPEAL FROM THE COURT OF QUEEN’S BENCH, APPEAL SIDE, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC

Municipal law—Valuation—Wooded tract of land—Limitation in valuation under s. 522 of the Cities and Towns Act, R.S.Q. 1941, c. 233 [now art. 523 of R.S.Q. 1964, c. 193].

The respondent, a limited liability company, is the owner of a large wooded tract of land, 835 arpents in area, which it keeps as a park for its members, most of whom have residences on neighbouring lots. The whole is within the territory of the appellant municipality, a town governed by the Cities and Towns Act, R.S.Q. 1941, c. 233. The Magistrate’s Court ruled in two cases that the land should be entered on the valuation roll at its real value and that the respondent was not entitled to benefit from the provisions of s. 522 of the Cities and Towns Act, which limits the valuation at $100 per arpent for “All land under cultivation or farmed or used as pasture for cattle, as well as all uncleared land or wood lots”. The majority in the Court of Appeal reversed these rulings. The municipality was granted leave to appeal to this Court.

Held: The appeals should be dismissed.

The respondent is entitled to benefit from the provisions of s. 522 of the Act. One must ascertain the meaning of the words used by the legislature rather than speculate as to its intentions. The fact that land under cultivation is mentioned first does not warrant the statement that in this provision the notion of agriculture is paramount. The legislature could have made the partial exemption of uncleared land or wood lots conditional; it has not done so. Rather, it has amended the section in another direction on two occasions. These amendments do not affect the respondent.

APPEALS from two judgments of the Court of Queen’s Bench, Appeal Side, province of Quebec[1], reversing two judgments of the Magistrate’s Court (now the Provincial Court). Appeals dismissed.

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J. LeBel, for the appellant.

P.W. Gauthier, Q.C., and M.A. Gagnon, for the respondent.

The judgment of the Court was delivered by

PIGEON J.—These two appeals, brought by special leave of this Court, are from two decisions of the Quebec Court of Appeal[2] which, with one dissenting opinion, reversed two judgments of the Magistrate’s Court (now the Provincial Court) on a question involving the municipal valuation of the same real estate for successive three-year periods.

The respondent, a limited liability company, is the long time owner of a large wooded tract of land, 835 arpents in area, which it keeps as a park for its members. Most of them have residences on neighbouring lots. The whole is now within the territory of the appellant municipality, a town governed by the Cities and Towns Act, R.S.Q. 1941, c. 233 at the time of the institution of the proceedings in 1960 and 1963, now R.S.Q. 1964, c. 193. The only point in issue is whether the land should be entered on the valuation roll at its real value of $440,000 for the 1960 case and of $596,900 for the 1963 case, or at $83,500 in each case, namely at $100 per arpent, by application of s. 522 (now s. 523) of the Act. This section, with the amendments enacted in 1959 and 1960, reads as follows:

All land under cultivation or farmed or used as pasture for cattle, as well as all uncleared land or wood lots within the municipality, shall be taxed to an amount of not more than one per cent of the municipal valuation, including all taxes, both general and special.

Such land cannot be valued at more than one hundred dollars per arpent if it has an area of fifteen arpents or more. Such evaluation shall include the house used as a farmer’s dwelling, the value whereof not exceeding ten thousand dollars, as well as the barns, stables and other buildings used in connection with the said land. If the value of such house exceeds ten thousand dollars, it shall be included in the valuation only to the extent of the said sum and

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the excess, separately valued, shall be subject to the tax mentioned in the first paragraph of this section. The council may cause to be added to the valuation roll, from time to time, by the assessors in office, on the valuation by them made, any portion of such land which has been detached therefrom as a building lot and shall thus have become liable to taxation after the closing of the valuation roll, and may exact the said tax as upon all other lots entered on the roll.

The foregoing provisions of this section shall cease to apply to such lands and structures as soon as they are the subject of a transaction the effect of which is to transfer the ownership thereof to a person, firm or corporation acquiring the same for subdivision into lots, for housing, industrial or commercial development or for speculation or any real estate operations.

The Magistrate’s Court considered that in order to be entitled to benefit from this provision, the company would have to show, in this case as in that of land under cultivation, that the land in question was utilized so as to obtain an income therefrom:

[TRANSLATION] …by the exemption in s. 522 above, the legislature sought to foster agricultural or other cultivation, provided that this yields some economic return to the farmer. This aspect of income, total or partial, is essential for the exemption provided in the Act to be applicable.

In this case, appellant was clearly unable to establish that its lots were utilized for any gainful purpose. The witness Wray told us that in 20 years, the total sale of wood cut from these lots, 835 arpents in area, amounted to less than $20,000. In other words, over a twenty-year span appellant did not make enough money to pay its taxes, much less meet the expenses of maintaining this woodland.

The majority in the Court of Appeal rejected this distinction; Hyde J. said:

With respect I see no justification for this qualification to Sec. 522.

The land in question is clearly a “wood lot” thereunder. We are not concerned with the question as to whether these wood lots are maintained for private or public pleasure, as parkland, green-belt, resource conservation, bird or game sanctuary or for pecuniary profit (other than that contemplated by the last paragraph of Sec. 522 as added by 8-9 Eliz. II c.

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36). It may well serve the public interest that it be preserved for several purposes. One has only to think of the inestimable benefit which has accrued to the people of Montreal through the preservation of Mount Royal as park land to realize the public advantage to be gained by encouraging the maintenance of wood lots.

Brossard J., on the other hand, stated that in s. 522 [TRANSLATION] “the notion of agriculture is paramount”. He then quoted the following definition from the Dictionnaire de la Langue Française au Canada, by Louis-Alexandre Bélisle:

[TRANSLATION] Woodland, wooded land, wood lots: timber limit granted to a settler by the government.

Then he went on to say:

[TRANSLATION] It does not really matter whether or not the “wood lots” are to land under sylviculture what uncleared lands are to land under cultivation; to me, one thing appears certain: their use is inseparable, in the mind of the legislator, from the field of agriculture. In the case under consideration, no such use of appellant’s property could be found for the years 1960 to 1965; it cannot therefore benefit from the wood lot exemption within the meaning of s. 522.

With all due respect, I am unable to agree with this reasoning. In the provision in question the legislature cannot have used the expression “wood lot” with the meaning given by Bélisle. This is a section of the Cities and Towns Act; a meaning appropriate for colonization parishes only must be rejected. Also, it must not be overlooked “uncleared land” is coupled with “wood lots”: logic requires that what is associated with “wood lots” be also applicable to “uncleared land.” But it is hard to see how in the latter expression anything can be found which implies a close connection with agriculture. The idea of “uncleared land” is much more suggestive of unproductive land than of a profitable yield.

In my opinion the basic rule of interpretation must govern this case, ascertaining the meaning of the words used by the legislature, rather than speculating as to its intentions. “Land under cultivation or farmed or used as pasture for

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cattle”, is mentioned first then the words are “as well as all uncleared land or wood lots”. The second class of land is therefore completely independent of the first. The fact that land under cultivation is mentioned first does not warrant the statement that in this provision the notion of agriculture is paramount. The legislature could have made the partial exemption of uncleared land or wood lots conditional; it has not done so. Rather, it has amended the section in another direction on two occasions, in 1959 and in 1960; the first time, to raise from three to ten thousand dollars the value of the farmer’s dwelling and farm buildings included in the maximum valuation of the land (second paragraph), the second time, to withdraw the benefit of the provision from any purchaser for speculative purposes. It is conceded that this last amendment does not affect those who, like the respondent, own land for recreational purposes, in other words, for use as a private park. Respondent does not therefore come within the only exception which the legislature saw fit to make to the special taxation system for “uncleared land or wood lots”.

It should be pointed out that the situation here is quite different from that which prevailed in Industrial Glass Co. Ltd. v. Cité de LaSalle[3]. That case concerned a piece of land which had formerly been cultivated, but had subsequently been left vacant and was owned for purposes other than cultivation. Thus it was not “uncleared land”.

For these reasons I would dismiss both appeals with costs in each case, but there should be one set of fees only.

Appeals dismissed with costs.

Solicitors for the appellant: Pouliot, Mercure, LeBel & Prud’Homme, Montreal.

Solicitors for the respondent: Cate, Ogilvy, Bishop, Cope, Porteous & Hansard, Montreal.