The respondent imported “greyish, non-descript” slabs of raw marble (sometimes as long as 16 feet) and, after finishing them, installed them in buildings as subcontractor. The finishing work included matching slabs so that the veining would match, grouting voids, rodding weakened slabs, gluing broken slabs, grinding, rough and fine polishing, cutting and finishing the edges. In finding that the finished slabs were “goods produced or manufactured in Canada” within the meaning of s. 30(1)(a) of the Excise Tax Act, R.S.C. 1952, Spence J stated (at p. 145, and quoting in the first sentence from M.N.R. v. Dominion Shuttle Co. Ltd. (1933), 72 C.S. 15 (Que. S.C.)):
“manufacture is the production of articles for use from raw or prepared material by giving to these materials new forms, qualities and properties or combinations whether by hand or machinery”. (The italics are my own.) ...[T]he finished marble slabs which left the respondent’s plant had by work, both by hand and machinery, received new form, new quality and new properties.
After noting (at p. 146) the finding in Gruen Watch Company of Canada Ltd. v. A.G. (Canada), 1950 CanLII 77 (ON SC), [1950] C.T.C. 440 that “the simple operation of putting a watch movement into a watch case is [not] ‘manufacturing’ a watch in the ‘ordinary, popular and natural sense’ of the word, but… the plaintiffs ‘produced’ watches,” Spence J stated (at p. 147):
if I had any doubt that the various procedures taken by the respondent in reference to the marble slabs resulted in the manufacture of a piece of marble, I would have no doubt that those procedures did result in the production of a piece of marble.