Régimbald J noted that, although s. 231.2(1) granted the Minister the authority to obtain information or documents regarding named persons for purposes relating to the administration or enforcement of the Act or a “listed international agreement” such as the Convention between Canada and Australia, in the case of a requirement regarding unnamed persons, s. 231.2(3)(b) instead only referred to the verification of compliance by a person or persons in a group with any obligation under the Act, i.e., there was no mention of any listed international agreement.
This was telling. With regard to “the presumption of consistent expression [which] assumes that the legislature uses language carefully and consistently so that within a statute or other legislative instrument, the same words have the same meaning and different words have different meanings” (para. 225) it seemed “highly unlikely that Parliament would refer to ‘this Act’ twice within section 231.2 and assign a different meaning to each reference” (para. 24). Similarly, regarding “the presumption against tautology [which] presumes Parliament to avoid superfluous or meaningless words; every word is presumed to have a specific role in advancing legislative purpose” (para. 225), Régimbald J indicted (at para. 228) that it seemed “unclear why Parliament would speak out of an abundance of caution in subsection 231.2(1) and not in subsection 231.2(3)”.