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Statutes and Statutory Interpretation - Ambiguity. Stonehouse Group Inc. v. Ontario (Minister of Finance)
In Stonehouse Group Inc. v. Ontario (Minister of Finance) (Ont CA, 2021) the Court of Appeal clarified a new (from 2006) tax statutory interpretation approach:[19] As was observed in Placer Dome [Placer Dome Canada Ltd. v. Ontario (Minister of Finance), 2006 SCC 20, [2006] 1 S.C.R. 715], at para. 22, “where the words of a statute give rise to more than one reasonable interpretation, the ordinary meaning of words will play a lesser role, and greater recourse to the context and purpose of the Act may be necessary”. It is clear from the argument before us that the words used in these sections, especially s. 79(7), give rise to more than one reasonable interpretation. . R v Boyce
In R v Boyce (Ont CA, 2019) the Court of Appeal defines 'ambiguity' to attract external statutory interpretation aids (other rules beside the basic Rizzo rule):[18] An ambiguity, in the relevant sense, means that the words of the provision are reasonably capable of bearing more than one meaning. The Supreme Court has cautioned that “one must consider the ‘entire context’ of a provision before one can determine if it is reasonably capable of multiple interpretations” and that “‘It is only when genuine ambiguity arises between two or more plausible readings, each equally in accordance with the intentions of the statute, that the courts need to resort to external interpretive aids’ … to which I would add, ‘including other principles of interpretation’.”: Bell ExpressVu, at para. 29.
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