The taxpayers were a corporation and its two 50% shareholders ("Grant and Lorraine"). Following an audit, the Minister laid income tax evasion charges against the taxpayers for their 2002 to 2007 years, resulting in a plea bargain based upon an agreed statement of facts. Lorraine and the corporation were convicted. The taxpayers appealed the Minister's subsequent income tax reassessments, which were for larger amounts than in the agreed facts as well as GST reassessments of the corporation. They moved under Rule 58 for a determination of the question of whether doctrines of issue estoppel and abuse of process applied to prevent the Minister from asserting the larger amounts.
Following Angle, Campbell J treated issue estoppel as a branch of res judicata (para. 15).
Before dismissing the application for a Rule 58 determination in light of the extent of issues that would still need to be resolved at trial, Campbell J found that issue estoppel did not apply. She noted that convictions based on plea bargains are not dispositive in civil proceedings, but are rather prima facie proof (paras. 31, 35), and that there was insufficient identity of issues between the current and prior proceedings – for example, the agreed facts did not deal with Grant's tax matters or the corporation's GST appeal. Campbell J further noted that "amounts dealt with in criminal proceedings are minimum amounts with respect to the civil proceedings" (para. 44).