After the Minister had assessed predecessors of the taxpayer on the basis that amounts paid by them to purchase seismic data exceeded the fair market value of the data, so that the full purchase price did not qualify as CEE, the taxpayer filed Notices of Objection. The Minister then issued Notifications of Confirmation which, based on the subsequently-decided decision in Global Communications, found that none of the purchase qualified for treatment as CEE (although the Minister did not purport to increase the tax payable by the taxpayer).
In finding that s. 152(9) did not preclude the Minister from issuing a Notice of Confirmation on this basis, Rothstein J.A. noted (at para. 40) that the confirmation did not have the effect of introducing a new transaction in that the Minister instead was only relying on an additional argument in support of denial of the CEE deductions that originally had been denied by the Minister.