The municipal property assessment authority sought leave to appeal a decision of the Assessment Review Board that reclassified a property from the industrial tax category to the commercial category.
The Board had relied in part on a Wikipedia definition of “manufacturing” and introduced criteria relating to the scale of operations and whether manufacturing constituted the predominant activity of the business.
The court held that the addition of these criteria raised a serious question regarding the correctness of the Board’s interpretation of Ontario Regulation 282/98 defining industrial property.
The court also found that the issue had broader importance for the property assessment process in Ontario.
Leave to appeal to the Divisional Court was granted.
