The taxpayers were middle-aged "all American" certified cost estimate professionals, with no significant previous exposure to Canada, who came to Alberta under two-year contracts (later extended by two years) to work on the Syncrude project. Although they acquired and modestly furnished apartments in Alberta, they maintained their substantial homes in the U.S. where their families stayed (other than for short visits to Alberta) and otherwise maintained their social ties and financial assets in the U.S. After finding that the taxpayers were deemed to be resident in Canada under the "sojourner" rule in s. 250(1)(a), Boyle J. found that they were resident only in the U.S. under Article IV of the Canada-U.S. Income Tax Convention. After noting that the taxpayers' Edmonton apartments qualified as permanent homes (so that the taxpayers had permanent homes in both jurisdictions), he proceeded to find that the taxpayers' centre of vital interests was in the US, stating (at para. 74):
It can be observed that for each of the Appellants:
(i) they lived only in the United States before coming to Canada...;
(ii) they left Canada at the conclusion of their Syncrude work;
(iii) they maintained all of their pre-existing ties to the United States throughout the relevant period that they were working on the Syncrude project in Canada. It was only their physical presence of being in Canada that was no longer entirely focused in the US;
(iv) the only ties they established to Canada were those necessary for, or reasonably incidental to, the requirement that they physically be in Canada for the period they were working on the Syncrude project.