Background
Therese A. Onischuk represented herself in a General Procedure income-tax appeal concerning a May 16, 2024 notice of reassessment for the 2016 taxation year. Justice Michael U. Ezri decided the matter on written submissions. The appeal had already generated three case-management orders addressing deficiencies in the pleadings and the conduct of the proceeding.
Order #2, issued March 24, 2026 after an in-person conference, allowed the appeal to continue under strict conditions. It barred the appellant’s husband and representative, Daniel Onischuk, from acting in the appeal and restricted filings without leave to a conforming notice of appeal of no more than 10 pages, documents expressly permitted by legislation or the Informal Procedure Rules and limited to 20 pages, or court-requested submissions limited to 20 pages. The order also confined the appeal to matters within the Tax Court’s jurisdiction. The reasons noted that Mr. Onischuk had been declared a vexatious litigant by the Alberta Court of King’s Bench and that his conduct had raised concerns in other Tax Court files.
After the appellant failed to provide a conforming notice of appeal, Order #3 of May 5, 2026 struck portions of the proposed amended pleading without further leave to amend and confirmed that Mr. Onischuk could not participate. The appellant nevertheless attempted to file hundreds of pages of additional documents and affidavits on six dates in May, June and July 2026; the Registry returned them without filing. In August and September, she submitted approximately 35 motions. Although each was within the 20-page limit, together they totalled 700 pages.
The Court’s Holding
Justice Ezri ordered all of the motions returned without being filed because none complied with Order #2. He found that their extension-of-time framing did not identify a deadline requiring extension or invoke an applicable discovery rule. Instead, the motions sought to introduce evidence before trial, revisit collections matters excluded from the appeal, raise other tax years, and attack Orders #2 and #3. The judge held that disagreement with those orders had to be pursued by appeal, not through a collateral attack in new motions. He characterized the first motion as an attempt to relitigate adjudicated matters rather than a genuine extension request.
The court also found that the motions’ structure was designed to circumvent the page limit. The appellant divided exhibits or small groups of exhibits among separate affidavits and motions, including splitting Exhibit A3 across two affidavits and Exhibit C5 across two motions. Justice Ezri explained that dividing a single exhibit compromised the integrity of the affidavits and was not justified by the nature of the evidence. Many motions were also filed a second time as amended motions seeking to compel unspecified affidavit evidence from the Canada Revenue Agency. Although some materials, such as 2016 reassessments and notices of objection, appeared relevant, the court reiterated that trial was the proper time and place for evidence.
Justice Ezri concluded that the appellant’s repeated noncompliance, unsupported filings, consumption of court and respondent resources, and attempts to evade procedural restrictions constituted an ongoing abuse of process. He recognized that the court’s power to control its process can include dismissing an appeal conducted abusively, and said he was “sorely tempted” to dismiss this appeal immediately. He instead gave the appellant one final opportunity to comply, expressly warning that further misconduct would result in dismissal for abuse of process.
At the respondent’s request for scheduling, the court directed that the parties could file a joint timetable for remaining litigation steps by November 27, 2026. If they could not agree, each party was required to submit an individual proposal by that date, limited to two pages.
Key Takeaways
- All approximately 35 August and September 2026 motions were returned without filing; the underlying tax appeal was not dismissed.
- Compliance with a page limit in each individual document did not cure a coordinated effort to evade filing restrictions through voluminous, repetitive and divided submissions.
- The court treated the motions as an impermissible collateral attack on earlier orders and an abuse of process, not as genuine extension-of-time requests.
- The parties received a November 27, 2026 deadline for a joint timetable or separate two-page scheduling proposals, and the appellant received an explicit final dismissal warning.
Why It Matters
The order illustrates how the Tax Court may enforce case-management restrictions by examining the substance and cumulative effect of filings rather than accepting their labels or individual page counts. It also distinguishes the court’s authority to dismiss an appeal for abusive conduct from its exercise of that authority: here, dismissal was threatened as the consequence of further misconduct, not imposed.
For self-represented litigants and counsel, the decision underscores that evidence generally belongs at trial, excluded collections issues cannot be reintroduced through motions, and challenges to existing orders must follow the proper appellate route. The ruling is tied to this appellant’s repeated violations and the specific orders governing her appeal; it does not establish a universal page-based test for abusive litigation.