In his 2000 to 2002 taxation years, the taxpayer made gifts to a registered charity that were funded from personal funds and from loans tied to the gifts. His Notice of Appeal stated that had he been a resident of Quebec, he would have been entitled to a deduction under s. 118.1 respecting the cash portion of the gifts given that the Civil Code recognized split gifts, i.e., that gifts could be made even where consideration was received, and that “Parliament did not intend for section 118.1…to produce radically different results for taxpayers in Québec that would not apply to taxpayers in the rest of Canada.” In reversing a decision of the Tax Court to strike these pleadings, Noël JA stated (at para. 42) that “it cannot be said with certainty that the meaning of ‘gift’ prior to the [December] 2002 amendments excluded the notion of split gift in the common law provinces,” and then stated (at para. 44):
[T]he appellant does not invoke uniformity for the sake of uniformity. The appellant’s plea is based on the broader proposition that Parliament intended to recognize split gifts, wherever made, in line with the civil law. Given that it would have been open to Parliament to attribute to the word gift a meaning which coincides with the civil law and that it is arguable that this is what Parliament intended, there is no basis for striking the appellant’s plea at this stage… .