Red River College loses bid to exclude school taxes from payments to Winnipeg

Red River College must continue paying Winnipeg grants in lieu of both municipal property taxes and school taxes on six properties, despite qualifying for a statutory tax exemption, the Manitoba Court of King’s Bench has ruled.

In Red River College v. Winnipeg (City) et al, 2026 MBKB 137, released October 2, 2026, Justice McKelvey dismissed the college’s challenge to assessment decisions and rejected its argument that a separate school-tax exemption relieved it of the school portion of those payments.

The result turns on the distinction between being exempt from a tax and being required to make an equivalent payment under another statute. The court held that the college’s exemption covered both property and school taxes, but the grants-in-lieu provisions required payments matching those exempted taxes.

Six properties and two competing exemptions

The college and its board of governors appealed December 2020 decisions of Winnipeg’s Board of Revision concerning six properties owned, leased or operated by the college. The appeal concerned the 2020 supplementary assessment roll for one property and the 2021 assessment rolls for the others. The parties agreed that its outcome would govern subsequent assessment appeals, after comparable decisions in the 2023 and 2025 assessment cycles.

There was no dispute that the properties were used, wholly or partly, for education. Some had mixed uses: the Notre Dame Avenue property included a daycare, while the Main Street property combined hospitality and culinary-arts teaching on its lower floors with student dormitories above.

Winnipeg’s assessor and the board accepted that the properties qualified under section 22(1)(b.1) of The Municipal Assessment Act. That provision exempts property owned or used by a college defined in The Advanced Education Administration Act from taxation levied by a municipality, other than local-improvement taxes. Red River College is expressly included in that statutory definition.

The college argued that section 23(1)(d) also applied. That provision gives qualifying property owned by, or held in trust for and used by, a college or seminary of learning a school-tax exemption, subject to a land-area limit. The college sought relief from school-tax payments and a refund of grants already paid in lieu of school taxes.

Why the broader exemption did not produce a smaller bill

The dispute required the judge to read the assessment legislation together with The Municipal Act and the legislation governing education and Winnipeg’s tax collection. The court applied a correctness standard to the board’s decisions, rather than deferring to them.

The judge explained that tax exemptions are not automatically interpreted narrowly. Their wording must be understood in context, consistently with the purpose and structure of the legislation. Here, the exemption scheme moved from broad exemptions to narrower ones, and the legislature had specifically placed Red River College within section 22.

Allowing the same college property, used for the same purpose, to claim the narrower section 23 exemption as well would make the provisions redundant and disrupt that scheme, the court held. Another provision allows municipalities to add property-tax relief by bylaw for properties already exempt from school taxes under section 23. That mechanism would make little sense for Red River College properties already covered by the broader exemption as of right.

The ruling did not say multiple exemptions can never apply to one property. The legislation contemplates different exemptions where land or buildings serve different purposes, with their treatment depending on the use of the relevant portions or the property’s primary purpose. It did not support layering the two exemptions on the college’s educational use to obtain the result sought here.

The court also noted an independent difficulty for two leased properties: section 23(1)(d) refers to property owned by or held in trust for the educational institution, not simply leased by it.

School levies remained part of the required payment

The college’s alternative argument concerned the meaning of municipal taxation in the grants-in-lieu provisions. It accepted that grants should compensate Winnipeg for municipal services, but argued that school levies collected for the province and school divisions were different. The college provides education, it said, rather than drawing on the public-school services financed by those levies.

The judge rejected that distinction for this statutory scheme. Municipalities levy and collect both their own property taxes and education levies. Because the college’s section 22 exemption covered both, the corresponding grant under section 335 of The Municipal Act had to reflect both. The six properties fell within the institutional-lands provisions requiring those payments.

The judge acknowledged that this put the college in a less favourable position than private vocational institutions that paid property taxes but benefited from the school-tax exemption. That potential public-policy inequity did not displace what the court found to be the legislation’s clear, coherent meaning.

The application was dismissed, with tariff costs awarded to the respondents. If the parties cannot agree on costs, they may return to court on that issue. The decision does not quantify a refund or a new tax bill; it upholds the challenged assessment treatment and the obligation to include school taxes in the grants-in-lieu calculation.