Cases
Friesen v. The Queen, 95 DTC 5551, [1995] 3 S.C.R. 103
After characterizing the Crown's proposed interpretation of the definition of "inventory" in s. 248(1) of the Act as a request to treat the definition as if it contained additional words, Major J. stated (at p. 5556):
"It is a basic principle of statutory interpretation that the Court should not accept an interpretation which requires the insertion of extra wording where there is another acceptable interpretation which does not require any additional wording. Reading extra words into a statutory definition is even less acceptable when the phrases which must be read in appear in several other definitions in the same statute."
See Also
Canadian Occidental U.S. Petroleum Corp. v. The Queen, 2001 DTC 295, Docket: 2000-1232-IT-G (TCC)
The taxpayer lent money on an interest-free basis to a non-resident wholly-owned subsidiary in 1988 and then, in November 1994, transferred the shares of the subsidiary to a sister company so that the borrower ceased to be a subsidiary controlled corporation of the taxpayer. The Minister assessed on the basis that the loan thereupon ceased to qualify for the exemption in former s. 17(3), which was available to a loan that "was made to a subsidiary controlled corporation."
Bowman A.C.J. rejected this position on the basis that it had the effect of adding the words "and throughout the period in which the loan was outstanding the corporation continued to be a subsidiary controlled corporation" to s. 7(3). He stated (at p. 297):
"French and English are linguistic instruments capable of great precision of expression. Parliamentary drafters are presumed to have mastered one or both of those languages and to be able to say what they mean and to mean what they say."