A decision of the Federal Court below to require the Minister to provide the taxpayer (a trust that allegedly was resident in Barbados for purposes of the Canada-Barbados Income Tax Convention and which had disposed of shares of a Canadian corporation) with a written decision as to whether the shares were treaty exempt property, based on a conclusion of the court that the taxpayer was resident in Barbados and not a resident of Canada, was reversed.
The Federal Court should not exercise jurisdiction to entertain an application for judicial review of a refusal by the Minister to issue an s. 116 certificate (as occurred in this case) where the taxpayer could have recourse to the Tax Court by filing an income tax return and appealing the resulting assessment. Section 116 is not a provision under which the Minister must determine a person's tax liability for capital gains tax but instead "is a statutory device for requiring the withholding of tax at source for the provision of security, so that if a Part I tax liability arises, collection is facilitated" (para. 15).