Words and Phrases - "relating to"
Re Assaly and Minister of Revenue (1986), 56 OR (2d) 30 (HCJ)
A corporation owned by the appellant entered into an agreement with him in 1981 to sell vacant land to him for a purchase price of $185,000 with the agreement of purchase and sale being conditional upon the appellant and the corporation entering into a building contract under which the corporation would construct condominium units on the land. The transfer was registered in 1983 after building work had been completed.
Although the gross sale price for the conveyance was $185,000, the building contract constituted "part of the arrangement relating to the conveyance" and by virtue of the building contract arrangement a liability was assumed by the appellant as part of that arrangement. McKinlay J. noted that the Oxford English Dictionary defined "arrangement" as "a structure or combination of things for a purpose". Consequently, the total "value of the consideration" was $2,142,700 (i.e., including such liability).
Slattery (Trustee of) v. Slattery, 93 DTC 5443, [1993] 3 S.C.R. 430, [1993] 2 CTC 243
A trustee in bankruptcy of a taxpayer was permitted to introduce testimony of two Revenue Canada officials in proceedings instituted in the New Brunswick Court of Queen's Bench for a declaration that certain assets registered in the name of the taxpayer's wife were held in trust for the taxpayer's estate. After noting (at p. 5447) that the phrase "relating to" in s. 241(3) had the same wide scope as "in respect of," Iacobucci, J. found that the proceedings related to the enforcement of the Act because their ultimate purpose was the payment of taxes owed to Revenue Canada, which was a preferred beneficiary of the estate. In addition, a contrary conclusion would result in the absurdity that confidential information obtained by Revenue Canada could not be disclosed in proceedings initiated by the trustee in bankruptcy, whereas if the trustee in bankruptcy refused to act and Revenue Canada then took the same proceedings under s. 38(1) of the Bankruptcy Act, such information could arguably be disclosed. Finally, as a policy matter, there was no valid reason why the Minister should be inhibited from recourse to the bankruptcy process, as opposed to being restricted to the administrative remedies set out in Part XV of the Act, such as that contained in s. 160.