Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Whether The Cities Act’s requirement of “mass appraisal” permits a rent model built solely on the rents from a single commercial property rather than multiple properties.
• Interpretation of the statutory “market valuation standard” and whether it legally mandates the use of common data from more than one property in income-based assessment models.
• The lawfulness of the assessor’s decision to group Southland Mall with Cornwall Centre in the same rent stratum instead of treating either mall as a unique property requiring its own substratum.
• The extent to which prior Court of Appeal authorities (Affinity, Sasco, CCRL, Brandt) restrict assessors from using single-property appraisal methods within a statutory mass appraisal regime.
• The weight to be given to conflicting expert evidence about the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency handbook versus the binding requirements of The Cities Act.
• Whether an assessor can lawfully adjust or sub-stratify a rent model for one property using only that property’s rents without undermining the concept and purpose of mass appraisal.

Background and parties
SBLP Southland Mall Inc. is the owner of Southland Mall, a large enclosed shopping centre in Regina. In 2019, the City of Regina carried out its regular municipal property tax assessment for Southland Mall. The Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency (SAMA) is the provincial assessment authority involved in the broader assessment system, but it did not appear on the appeal. The City of Regina and SAMA were named as respondents, with the City actively defending the assessment and the Assessment Appeals Committee’s decision. Southland Mall, as appellant, challenged the legal basis of the methodology used to value its property for tax purposes.

Initial assessment and valuation dispute
For the 2019 taxation year, the City’s assessor valued Southland Mall at approximately $135 million using an income-based mass appraisal model. Southland Mall was grouped in the same stratum as another major Regina shopping centre, the Cornwall Centre, to generate a single market rent estimate for that group of high-end enclosed malls. This rent estimate differed from that used for the three other enclosed shopping centres in Regina, reflecting the assessor’s view that Southland and Cornwall formed a distinct category. Southland objected to both the valuation and the methodology, arguing that the rent model and stratification did not properly reflect its property and that the assessment was too high.

First round of appeals and procedural fairness issues
Southland first appealed the assessment to the municipal Board of Revision. The Board upheld the assessor’s valuation and methodology. Southland then appealed further to the Assessment Appeals Committee, which also upheld the Board’s decision. Southland subsequently took the matter to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal. In a 2022 decision, the Court of Appeal found that the Board of Revision had breached its duty of procedural fairness toward Southland. Because of that procedural defect, the Court did not finally determine the assessment dispute at that stage; instead, it sent the case back to the Assessment Appeals Committee for reconsideration, directing that the matter be dealt with fairly and in accordance with law.

Return to the Assessment Appeals Committee and new legal ground
When the matter returned to the Assessment Appeals Committee after the 2022 Court of Appeal ruling, Southland added a new legal ground of appeal. This fresh issue focused squarely on the legality of using more than one property’s rents within a rent model or within a stratification. Southland argued that the assessor could, and should, have used only Southland’s (or possibly only Cornwall’s) own rents as the basis for its assessment, effectively treating the mall as a single-property substratum within the larger model. The Committee rejected that argument. It relied heavily on two prior Court of Appeal decisions, Affinity Holdings Ltd. v Shaunavon (Town) and Sasco Developments Ltd. v Moose Jaw (City). Reading these together with other appellate authorities, the Committee concluded that using only one property’s rents to value that property amounts to single-property appraisal, which is not permitted under The Cities Act because the Act requires mass appraisal for non-regulated properties. The Committee therefore upheld the Board’s decision and maintained the assessor’s use of multiple properties’ rents in the model.

Statutory framework and policy terms at issue
The core “policy terms” here arise not from an insurance policy but from the statutory regime in The Cities Act. The Act defines the “market valuation standard” in s. 163(f.1), and requires that all non-regulated properties in cities be assessed in accordance with that standard (s. 164.1(2)). Under this legislative framework, mass appraisal is mandatory for non-regulated properties. Mass appraisal, as interpreted by the Court of Appeal in cases such as Affinity, Sasco, Consumers Co-operative Refineries Limited v Regina (City) (CCRL) and Brandt Properties Ltd. v Saskatoon (City), means assessing the market values of groups of similar properties using common data and statistical models rather than valuing each property individually. Substantively, the Court has emphasised that: (1) mass appraisal involves “a group of similar properties”, not a single property; (2) the model must employ common data drawn from multiple properties, such as rents and other economic indicators; and (3) any method that amounts to single-property appraisal is only permissible, if at all, in highly limited circumstances and cannot replace the statutory requirement of mass appraisal. The distinction between mass appraisal and single-property appraisal is therefore the central policy and legal issue in the case.

Southland’s arguments on mass appraisal and rent models
Before the Court of Appeal in the 2025 decision, Southland advanced two related legal questions. First, it argued that the Committee erred in law in finding that more than one property’s rents are required within a rent model when performing an assessment. Southland contended that a model using multiple rents from a single property could still meet the statutory definition of mass appraisal. In its view, the assessor could treat Southland (or Cornwall) as its own internal basis for rent modelling without relying on data from other properties. Second, in the alternative, Southland argued that even if multiple properties’ rents are usually required, assessors should be allowed to make adjustments or sub-stratifications within an existing rent model using only one property’s rents. Specifically, Southland said the assessor should have treated Cornwall Centre as a substratum by itself and then adjusted the model solely on Cornwall’s own rents. To support this, Southland relied on two municipal board decisions: Saskatoon (City) v Midtown Plaza Inc. (Midtown) and Saskatoon (City) v 101071855 Saskatchewan Ltd. (Saskatoon v SaskCo). In those cases, the Assessment Appeals Committee had accepted or directed approaches that relied more heavily on the subject property’s own rents because the properties were found to be unique. Southland argued the assessor in its case erred in principle by not considering whether Cornwall (or Southland) might be similarly unique and thus deserving of special substratum treatment. Southland also pointed to expert evidence suggesting that the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency handbook does not strictly require multiple properties for a rent model, arguing that the Committee should have accepted this interpretation of acceptable methodology.

The Court’s analysis of mass appraisal and multiple properties
The Court of Appeal rejected Southland’s primary argument that mass appraisal could be satisfied by using multiple rents from a single property. Relying on its own precedents, the Court held that The Cities Act, properly interpreted, requires assessors to use mass appraisal methods that assess multiple properties with one model using common data drawn from those properties. A method that uses only one property’s rents is, in substance, single-property appraisal, even if labelled otherwise. Such an approach conflicts with the statutory scheme and the Court’s earlier decisions in Affinity, Sasco, CCRL and related cases. On the evidentiary side, the Court noted that even if an expert suggested that the SAMA handbook allowed single-property rent models, that evidence could not override the statutory requirements and binding appellate case law. Moreover, the Committee found the expert evidence conflicted and chose to rely instead on its own interpretation of the Act and existing Court of Appeal authority. The Court held that this was open to the Committee and involved no legal error.

Stratification, uniqueness and sub-strata arguments
On Southland’s alternative argument about creating a substratum based on one property’s rents, the Court again sided with the Committee. It accepted that stratification in mass appraisal must be based on comparability factors such as physical characteristics, market conditions and legal land-use restrictions. Stratification and sub-stratification exist to group properties with similar value-driving characteristics, not to isolate one property from the model using only its own rent data. The Court examined Midtown and Saskatoon v SaskCo and found them distinguishable. In those cases, the Committee had concluded on the evidence that the subject properties were unique within their broader groupings, justifying particular treatment within a mass appraisal framework. Here, by contrast, no finding had been made that either Southland Mall or Cornwall Centre was unique. There was no evidentiary basis to treat Cornwall as a different type of shopping centre (such as a “regional shopping centre” distinct from community malls) in a way that would justify a single-property substratum. The Court also rejected the idea that the assessor was required to make a specific “uniqueness” finding before deciding to use more than one property’s rents. In the Court’s view, the assessor properly applied ordinary mass appraisal principles, grouping comparable enclosed malls together and using multiple properties’ rents, and was not obliged to search for uniqueness where the evidence did not indicate it. Allowing each property to become its own substratum based on its own rents would effectively collapse the system into single-property appraisal, undermining the legislative intent behind The Cities Act’s mass appraisal requirement.

Outcome and financial implications
In the result, the Court of Appeal held that the Assessment Appeals Committee had correctly interpreted and applied The Cities Act and relevant appellate jurisprudence. It found no reviewable error in the Committee’s conclusion that mass appraisal under an income approach cannot lawfully be performed using rents from only a single property, whether at the model level or within a stratification or substratum. The appeal was therefore dismissed. The successful party was the City of Regina (with SAMA also a respondent), and the Court ordered that the City is entitled to its costs of both the application for leave to appeal and the appeal in the usual manner. However, the decision does not specify a dollar amount for those costs or any other monetary award, so the exact total amount ordered in favour of the City cannot be determined from the judgment.