A-514-75
Vauban Productions (Appellant)
v.
The Queen (Respondent)
Court of Appeal, Pratte and Le Dain JJ. and Hyde
D.J.—Montreal, April 18; Ottawa, May 7, 1979.
Income tax — Canada-France Income Tax Convention —
Appeal from judgment holding contract dealing with motion,
picture films to be a lease rather than contract of sale —
Appellant alleging Trial Judge ignored text of agreed state
ment of facts and documents — Appellant also contending
that Trial Judge wrongly characterized contracts as leases
rather than sales — Appeal dismissed — The Canada-France
Income Tax Convention Act, 1951, S.C. 1951, c. 40, Art.
13(IV).
INCOME tax appeal.
COUNSEL:
P. F. Vineberg, Q.C. for appellant.
Roger Roy and Daniel Verdon for respondent.
SOLICITORS:
Phillips & Vineberg, Montreal, for appellant.
Deputy Attorney General of Canada for
respondent.
The following are the reasons for judgment
rendered in English by
PRATTE J.: Counsel for the appellant attacked
the judgment of the Trial Division' on two
grounds.
First, he said that the Judge had ignored the
text of the "agreed statement of facts and docu
ments" that had been filed by the parties. This
assertion is, in my view, without foundation. The
statement filed by the parties summarized certain
documents to which it referred and which were
annexed to it. All that the Judge did was to give
precedence to the text of those documents over the
summary that was contained in the statement. In
doing so, the learned Judge did not commit any
error.
The appellant's second contention was that the
Trial Judge had wrongly characterized the con
' [1976] 1 F.C. 65.
tracts entered into by the CBC and the appellant
as leases rather than sales. This contention must
also, in my view, be rejected.
Contrary to what was argued by the appellant's
counsel, by the contracts here in question the
appellant did not sell to the CBC the rights that
the appellant already possessed in certain motion
picture films. As the Trial Judge correctly found,
the appellant's rights in those films were distribu
tor's rights, whereas the rights which it granted to
the CBC were user's rights. It is clear that, by
those contracts, the appellant, acting as a distribu
tor of certain films, agreed, in consideration of a
lump sum payment, to supply for a time copies of
those films to the CBC and to grant it for the same
period of time the exclusive right to show them on
its television network. In my view, the Trial Judge
was right in holding that such a contract is "lease
of motion picture films" within the meaning of
paragraph IV of Article 13 of The Canada-France
Income Tax Convention Act, 1951, S.C. 1951,
c. 40.
For those reasons, I would dismiss the appeal
with costs.
* * *
LE DAIN J.: I agree.
* * *
HYDE D.J.: I agree.
You are being directed to the most recent version of the statute which may not be the version considered at the time of the judgment.