A corporation ("117679") owned by the taxpayer issued a stock dividend of non-voting shares to the taxpayer that were redeemable and retractable for an aggregate of $487,000. The next day, the taxpayer sold these shares to a partnership of which his wife was a general partner and three of his children held a 99% limited partnership interest in consideration for a $487,000 promissory note of the partnership bearing interest at the rate prescribed for purposes of s. 74.5. The taxpayer utilized the enhanced capital gains deduction in respect of his gain on the sale. Thereafter, dividends and proceeds of redemption of the redeemable shares of 117679 were paid by way of set-off against payments of principal and interest on the promissory note. The Minister recharacterized under s. 245 everything that the taxpayer received from the partnership as dividends.
In reversing the s. 245 reassessment of the taxpayer, Bowman C.J. indicated that he could not find that there was "some overarching principle of Canadian tax law that requires that corporate distributions to shareholders must be taxed as dividends, and where they are not the Minister is permitted to ignore half a dozen specific sections of the Act" and also noted that the transactions did not lack economic substance in that there was "a genuine change in legal and economic relations that took place as a result of the transactions".