Penalty Caution

"In Lacroix, at paragraph 28, this Court quoted the following passage from the decision of Justice Bowman in Farm Business Consultants Inc. v. Her Majesty the Queen, [1994] 2 C.T.C. 2450, 95 D.T.C. 200:\n\n27 A court must be extremely cautious in sanctioning the imposition of penalties under subsection 163(2). Conduct that warrants reopening a statute-barred year does not automatically justify a penalty and the routine imposition of penalties by the Minister is to be discouraged ... . Moreover, where a penalty is imposed under subsection 163(2) although a civil standard of proof is required, if a taxpayer's conduct is consistent with two viable and reasonable hypotheses, one justifying the penalty and one not, the benefit of the doubt must be given to the taxpayer and the penalty must be deleted ... ."