Maple Lodge Farms v. Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, Region 15, 2018 CanLII 40407

Assessment Review Board / Commission de révision de l’évaluation foncière

ISSUE DATE: April 30, 2018

FILE NO.: DM 2018M08

Moving Party: Maple Lodge Farms

Respondent: Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, Region 15 (“MPAC”)

Respondent: City of Brampton

Property Location: 8217 Winston Churchill Boulevard

Municipality: City of Brampton

Roll Number: 2110-080-012-08405-0000

Appeal Number: 3266019

Taxation Year: 2017

Legislative Authority: Section 40 of the Assessment Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. A.31, as amended

Heard: In writing

APPEARANCES:

Parties	Counsel
Maple Lodge Farms	Peter Milligan
MPAC	No one appeared
City of Brampton	No one appeared

DISPOSITION OF THE BOARD DELIVERED BY SCOTT McANSH

1Appeals must be filed with this Assessment Review Board (“Board”) in a timely way. The Assessment Act, RSO 1990, c A.31 (“Act”) sets out a variety of filing deadlines for different situations. Maple Lodge Farms (“Maple”) was informed by MPAC that their appeal was filed late, and has brought this motion seeking the Board’s permission for that late filing. I do not find that the appeal was late, and therefore do not need to grant permission for late filing. The appeal will be processed by the Board.

Late Filing

2Maple owns and operates a poultry processing plant in the City of Brampton. They filed a Request for Reconsideration of that property’s assessment with MPAC, as required, on January 18, 2017. MPAC properly acknowledged that as a timely filing on January 23, 2017. Subsection 39.1(7) required MPAC to mail the results of its reconsideration to Maple “no later than 180 days after the request is made.” 180 days after January 18, 2017 is July 17, 2017.

3Maple received the response to its Request for Reconsideration on August 15, 2017, just under a month after MPAC’s statutory deadline for mailing the response. The response from MPAC was dated April 25, 2017 and stated that the filing deadline with this Board was July 24, 2017, over three weeks before the response was received. When inquiries were made with MPAC, it became apparent that the response had been drafted in April, but had not been mailed until sometime in August.

4Maple attempted to file an appeal with this Board on August 16, 2017, the day after it received the response from MPAC. Their solicitors requested an extension of time to file, pursuant to Rule 26(b), a short time later.

Time for Filing

5The time for filing this appeal is set out in subsection 40(5) of the Act. That subsection contains two paragraphs: paragraph one applies when MPAC has mailed a notice and paragraph two applies when MPAC “has not mailed a notice of reconsideration within the time required.” The April response from MPAC had calculated the filling deadline of July 24, 2017, which would have been accurate if it had been mailed by the mailing deadline. However MPAC’s response was not mailed within the time required, it was mailed nearly a month after the statutory deadline.

6Paragraph 2 of subsection 40(5) is engaged when MPAC fails to mail their response to a Request for Reconsideration in time. That clause sets the filing deadline at “90 days after the notice should have been mailed by the corporation.” MPAC was required to mail the notice to Maple by July 17, 2017. Maple’s filing deadline with this Board was therefore 90 days later: October 15, 2017. Maple filed this appeal on August 16, 2017, well before that deadline. The appeal was not late, so Maple does not require any relief.

Conclusion

7MPAC’s failure to mail its responses to Maple in a timely way led to some confusion on Maple’s deadline for filing appeals to this Board. While MPAC stated that their filing deadline was July 24, 2017, the Act set out a filing deadline of October 15, 2017. Maple filed this appeal on August 16, 2017. It is not late, and will be processed by this Board.