Every lawyer quickly learns to eschew confident statements about what Supreme Court of Canada decisions will mean. You find out early on that the case that seemed to herald an earth-shattering transformation of your field often becomes completely ignored and forgotten, while cases that seemed ho-hum at the time become seminal. The careful solicitor is [...]

The first judgment released by the Supreme Court in 2007, on January 11, was Kingstreet Investments v. New Brunswick (Finance), 2007 SCC 1. The only issue raised in Kingstreet was whether the provincial revenue agency should be obligated to return to a taxpayer funds collected that constituted an illegal tax. The taxpayer in this case, [...]