This decision considers when it will be appropriate to allow a non-lawyer to represent a corporation in the Tax Court for a General Procedure hearing. The application was refused for this shareholder-director, as he would be the primary witness, he was in Panama when he swore the supporting affidavit (for the motion that was heard in writing), and there was no evidence that the corporation could not pay for lawyer.
The relevant criteria are here:
“[4] There is no definitive list of considerations that come into play in deciding whether it is appropriate to allow a corporation to be represented by a person other than counsel. Any relevant factor may be considered.
[5] Among the factors to be considered are the following:
1. Whether the proposed representative is duly authorized by the corporation to act as its representative. Authorization is mandatory. …
2. Whether the proposed representative has a connection to the corporation. While the rule no longer requires that the individual be an officer of the corporation, normally, that person should be an officer or director and, perhaps, a major shareholder or key employee of the corporation. I hasten to add that in no circumstances can an application under subsection 30(2) be used as a “back door” to hiring a non-lawyer agent.
3. Whether the interests of different stakeholders in the corporation are adequately protected …. For example, this could occur if, in addition to the ongoing tax dispute of the corporation, there was a family dispute going on as to the ownership of the shares pursuant to a will and different owners or potential owners had conflicting views on how the corporation should proceed in the tax appeal.
4. Whether the corporation can pay for counsel. Normally, if a company satisfies the Court that it cannot pay, leave will be granted so as to avoid the company being denied access to justice. This is a very important consideration.
5. Whether the proposed representative will be required to appear as advocate and as witness. If the proposed representative will have to testify, this will tend to militate against allowing the person to act as representative; generally, this factor would appear to be a factor of limited weight that would not, on its own, be a reason to deny such an application.
6. Whether the proposed representative is reasonably capable of adequately representing the corporation in terms of being able to comprehend the issues, adequately bring forth evidence and deal with the law. This will be affected by both the complexity of the relevant law and the complexity of the evidence.
7. Where the company is a small one person corporation, the Court will be more permissive in allowing representation by an agent, everything else being equal.”
At footnote 6, the Court adds that efficient use of Court resources is also a factor:
“6 I wish to elaborate on this particular consideration. We live in an era where resource constraints are very real. This Court has a great deal of experience with self-represented appellants and it is quite clear that in many cases with self-represented appellants the Court is obliged to spend more time on the case than it would have if the particular appellant had had counsel. Given that and given resource constraints, it is appropriate to consider this as a factor in deciding such an application.”