On 3 May 2010, the Minister supplied the taxpayer with a copy of a Notice of Reassessment dated 26 April 2010, bearing a "date of mailing" notation of 7 November 2008. The taxpayer served the Minister with a Notice of Objection on 7 June 2010. After receiving detailed submissions that the Notice of Reassessment had not been received until May 2010, the relevant CRA official (Mr. Kassam) rejected the Objection, on the basis that it had not been served within 90 days of the mailing of the Notice of Reassessment and no application for an extension of the time to do so had been made within the following year.
Campbell J granted the taxpayer's application to have Mr. Kassam's rejection of the Objection set aside. Such rejection was not reasonable. In reaching this decision, Mr. Kassam "was not sufficiently engaged with the evidence so as to form an independent opinion on the evidence" (he instead relied on the opinion of a subordinate) and there was "no transparent and intelligible justification for Mr. Kassam's finding that the Assessment was mailed" (para. 26).
Before so concluding, Campbell J stated (at para. 8) that he agreed with the taxpayer "that no right of appeal exists to the Tax Court...[as] s. 169(1)(b) ... does not apply to the present circumstances because the conditions precedents do not exist" (before then paraphrasing the provision without discussing it). He then stated (at para. 9):
[T]he purpose of the present Application is not to challenge the validity of the Assessment but to remove the Decision that is an obstacle placed in Conoco's path towards a proper consideration by the Minister of its Objection. I find that the present Application is within the jurisdiction of this Court and Conoco has no other access to justice besides the filing of the present Application.