Kathleen Poole

The moving party brought a motion for leave to appeal a decision of the Assessment Review Board.

The Divisional Court dismissed the motion for leave to appeal without costs.

The appellants appealed the 2022-2025 property assessments for a property in Hamilton, including supplementary assessments made under s. 34 of the Assessment Act.

The Board raised a preliminary question of law regarding the applicable valuation day for the s. 34 assessments.

Although all parties agreed the valuation day was January 1, 2016, the Board required legal submissions to determine if this was correct in law, departing from previous Board decisions that suggested a different valuation day applied to supplementary assessments.

The Board concluded that s. 19.2 of the Act prescribes the valuation day for all assessments for a taxation year, including s. 34 supplementary assessments.

Therefore, the valuation day for the s. 34 assessments is January 1, 2016.

The Assessment Review Board issued an order revising the returned assessments for various mining properties owned by Vale Canada Limited, Glencore Canada Corporation, and Xstrata Canada Corporation for the 2017 to 2025 taxation years.

The revisions were based on a joint submission by the parties following a previous interim decision.

The Board ordered the assessments to be revised to reflect the agreed-upon current values and apportionments set out in the attached schedule.

The City of Greater Sudbury appealed the current value assessments of eight mining properties owned by Vale Canada Limited and Glencore Canada Corporation for the 2017 to 2025 taxation years, arguing the values were too low.

The Assessment Review Board applied the Cost Approach valuation methodology to determine the Reproduction Cost New, depreciation, and land value.

The Board accepted the valuation evidence provided by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC), finding it to be the best available evidence over the City's expert evidence.

The Board also determined that no equitable adjustment to the current values was required.

The moving party (assessed person) brought a motion to prohibit the appellant municipality from raising the tax liability of two surge tanks as an issue in the assessment appeals, arguing the Board lacks jurisdiction to determine tax exemptions.

The Board dismissed the motion, finding that the municipality was not asking for a determination on tax exemption, but rather asking the Board to ascribe a value to the surge tanks as part of the property's current value, which is within the Board's jurisdiction.

The Board also denied the moving party's request to file a supplementary expert report, finding no exceptional circumstances to warrant an extension.

The City of Greater Sudbury brought a motion to exclude a supplementary expert report and the corresponding expert witness, Malcolm Stadig, tendered by Glencore Canada Corporation in a property assessment appeal regarding mining properties.

The City argued the evidence should be excluded because Glencore failed to file an Acknowledgment of Expert Duty by the deadline set in the Schedule of Events, and because the report was not proper reply evidence.

The Assessment Review Board dismissed the motion, finding that while Glencore breached the filing deadline, excluding the evidence would cause undue prejudice to Glencore.

The Board also found that the report constituted proper reply evidence as it responded to specific, unanticipated information raised in the City's expert report.

The applicant property owner brought a motion to correct a palpable error on the assessment roll for the 2017 to 2019 taxation years under s. 40.1 of the Assessment Act.

The error involved the double assessment of a unit, which had been missed by both parties when they previously settled the applicant's s. 40 appeals.

The respondent MPAC argued that issue estoppel should prevent the applicant from re-litigating the settled appeals.

The Assessment Review Board found that while the requirements for issue estoppel were met, it would decline to apply the doctrine because the previous settlement was based on a clear factual error resulting in double taxation.

The Board exercised its discretion to correct the palpable error, extending the time for appeals and directing MPAC to be the appellant.

The assessed persons, Glencore and Vale, brought a motion to prevent the City of Greater Sudbury from amending its pleadings and advancing certain issues in property assessment appeals for eight mining properties.

They argued that the City was precluded from doing so based on issue estoppel, promissory estoppel, abuse of process, and admissions, relying on a previous Board decision concerning six related properties and representations made in joint procedural requests.

The Assessment Review Board dismissed the motion, finding that the same questions had not been decided, no unequivocal promises were made, the City was following the Board's ordered process, and no binding admissions had been made.

The City of Greater Sudbury appealed the current value assessments of six active mining properties for the 2017 to 2021 taxation years, arguing that the assessments were too low.

The Assessment Review Board determined the current values using the cost approach.

The Board accepted the evidence of the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) and the respondent property owners regarding the reproduction cost new, depreciation, and land value, rejecting the City's proposed adjustments and global depreciation caps as unsupported.

The Board confirmed the current values as determined by MPAC and found no equitable reduction was required.

The City of Hamilton appealed the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation's (MPAC) assessment of a steel manufacturing property owned by Stelco Inc. The sole issue was the current value of 411.6 acres of unused residual lands.

MPAC assessed the lands at a nominal value of $100 per acre due to the likelihood of environmental contamination and lack of market interest, while the City argued for a value of $125,000 per acre based on comparable sales of uncontaminated industrial lands.

The Assessment Review Board accepted MPAC's evidence that the lands were unmarketable due to contamination concerns and confirmed the nominal assessment value.

The City of Greater Sudbury appealed the current value assessments of several active mining properties owned by Vale Canada Limited and Glencore Canada Corporation for the 2017 to 2021 taxation years.

The City argued that the assessments by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) were too low and sought significant increases.

The Board applied the cost approach to determine the current value, evaluating the reproduction cost new, depreciation, and land value.

The Board rejected the City's evidence, finding it unreliable and based on incorrect premises, and instead accepted MPAC's detailed and transparent costing and valuation methodology, which was supported by the property owners' experts.

The Board confirmed MPAC's current value assessments and found no equitable reduction was required.

The appellant appealed the property tax assessments for a large-format retail store for the 2017 to 2021 taxation years.

The central issue was the highest and best use (HABU) of the properties.

The respondent assessment corporation argued the HABU was high-rise mixed-use development, while the appellant argued it was the current use.

The Assessment Review Board found that the respondent failed to prove that a rezoning for high-rise development was reasonably probable within a reasonable timeframe, or that such development was financially feasible.

Consequently, the Board accepted the appellant's HABU of current use and adopted the appellant's cost approach valuation, reducing the assessments to a total of approximately $10.75 million.

The moving parties, Canadian Tire Properties Inc. and MPAC, brought a motion to extend the time to file a request for review and to reinstate appeals that were dismissed for non-attendance at a settlement conference.

The parties had failed to attend the settlement conference due to a mistaken belief that it had been cancelled, and had already executed Minutes of Settlement.

The Assessment Review Board found that fairness weighed in favour of granting the reinstatement, noting the lack of prejudice and the fact that all parties supported the motion.

The Board extended the time and reinstated the appeals to allow the executed Minutes of Settlement to be processed.

The applicants sought leave to appeal two decisions of the Assessment Review Board regarding the property tax assessment of parking lots and a development site in downtown Toronto.

The core issue was whether 'air rights' or development rights should be classified as 'land' or 'real property' under the Assessment Act, which would allow them to be classified as 'vacant land' or 'excess land' and taxed at a lower rate.

The Divisional Court found no serious debate that air rights are not land for the purposes of the Act, as they have no physical existence and are merely attributes of the land.

The applications for leave to appeal were dismissed.