Sharlow, J.A. found that the "gift portion" exception to the rollover rule in s. 87(4) did not apply to a transaction in which the taxpayer received, on an amalgamation of its subsidiary with a subsidiary of another corporation, preferred shares that had a lower fair market value than the shares which it held of the subsidiary going into the amalgamation. In rejecting an alternative submission of the Minister that the amalgamation entailed an appropriation of property of the taxpayer (namely, its shares of its subsidiary) for the benefit of its shareholder (who wished this transaction to occur as part of a larger transaction), so that such shares of the subsidiary were deemed to be disposed of for their fair market value, Sharlow, J.A. stated (at para. 71-72):
"If subsection 69(4) can be applied to the disposition of shares to which para. 87(4)(a) also applies, the result in many cases (and certainly in this case) would be two statutory deeming rules creating two different statutory fictions. That cannot be ... In my view, the specific provisions of subsection 87(4) must trump the more general rule in subsection 69(4)."