The taxpayer, who resided in Thunder Bay, suffered from temporomandibular joint dysfunction, requiring prosthetic joints that were sensitive to cold. She spent the six coldest months of the year in warmer climates in Southeast Asia or Latin America.
Ryer JA allowed the Minister's appeal and denied the taxpayer's claim of a medical expense tax credit for $17,531 of airfare, accommodations and meals expenses incurred by her and her husband for a trip in 2009 to Thailand and Indonesia. Under a purposive interpretation of ss. 118.2(2)(g) and (h), "the medical services contemplated by this provision must be provided to the patient by a person or hospital," and the textual limitation of s. 118.2(2)(a) to "a medical service…obtained from a person or hospital who or which provides such services… should carry over and become the correct interpretation of the term "medical services" in paragraph 118.2(2)(g) [or (h)]" (para. 38). Accordingly, "because the salutary effects of the warm Thai and Indonesian climates were not provided to the Taxpayer by a person or hospital, those effects cannot constitute a medical service" (para. 43).