Gagné, Lavallée, Hardy

Appeal from a judgment of the Superior Court dismissing an application for judicial review. Dismissed.

In 2018, the respondent municipality used the new provisions of article 1000.1 of the Municipal Code of Québec (CQLR, c. C-27.1) to adopt by-law 2019-04 on the taxation of vacant immovables. That by-law was repealed and replaced with by-law 2021-004, which was in turn repealed and replaced with by-law 2021-005. The purpose of these three by-laws was to impose a tax exclusively on vacant immovables of 10 acres or more located in the zones covered. These by-laws provided an exemption for owners of vacant immovables of more than 10 acres used as quarries or sand pits as well as covered immovables located in agricultural zones.

The appellant trust is the owner of a dozen vacant lots with an area of more than 10 acres located in the municipal territory and that are not used for forestry or other operations. The trust and its trustees ask the Court to declare by-laws 2019-04 and 2021-005 invalid on the ground that the municipality did not have the power to adopt them. The appellants also argue that these by-laws are arbitrary and discriminatory. Last, they ask the Court to declare that the minutes adopted during a sitting of the municipal council in connection with the by-laws are false.

The municipality had the power to impose a tax on a portion of its territory only. Article 1000.1 of the Municipal Code of Québec grants it a new direct taxation power that is comparable to the power set out in section 500.1 of the Cities and Towns Act (CQLR, c. C-19), which the Court in Plessis-Panet inc. c. Ville de Montréal (C.A., 2019-07-16), 2019 QCCA 1264, SOQUIJ AZ-51612109, 2019EXP-2067, characterized as a general taxation power, autonomous and distinct from the power in the Act respecting municipal taxation (CQLR, c. F-2.1).

The power to grant exemptions set out in subparagraph 1 of the fifth paragraph of article 1000.1 of the Code is not limited, which supports the conclusion that a municipality may provide that vacant lots in certain sectors of its territory are exempt from the tax. The judge did not make any reviewable error in finding that the power to exempt certain immovables from the impugned tax is set out in that article and that the use of this power to exempt lots of less than 10 acres from the tax was justified by the fact that they do not generate income greater than $50 per lot and that the only zones exempted in which vacant immovables of more than 10 acres are located are agricultural zones and priority extraction zones.

Moreover, when the legislature gives a municipality the power to prescribe exemptions in a by-law, this implicitly allows the municipality to discriminate, insofar as it exercises this power in a reasonable manner. In this case, the municipality had a rational and reasonable justification for providing an exemption from the tax in the impugned by-laws. The evidence shows that the by-law exemptions are based on the objective of promoting operations on the vacant lots located in the extraction zones without imposing an additional tax burden on quarries and sand pits, which are already subject to dues and property tax. In addition, the municipality was concerned about revitalizing vacant agricultural land and, to this end, not increasing the tax burden of farmers, in order to promote the restoration of this economic sector.

Last, the judge did not err with respect to the exigibility of the 2021 taxes. While it is true that he should have declared that the corrected minutes of the resolution adopting by-law 2021-005 were false, as they incorrectly stated that the list of vacant immovables had been filed with the municipal council, that error was not determinative.

Text of the decision: http://citoyens.soquij.qc.ca