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Guest
I've been doing some wacky thinking and, I could be completely wrong, but... THE CITY OF TORONTO MIGHT NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO CLOSE THE ISLAND AIRPORT!
The Island Airport is most defiantly federal jurisdiction.
The city exists due to provincial legislation and all powers are limited by ennobling/ birth giving legislation of the province.
The city cannot have legislation authority over federal matters.
Can the city regulate the airport--- NO!
It can certainly regulate noise, etc., pass by-laws, etc.
BUT HERE'S THE POSSIBLE BAD NEWS: any legislation passed by the city or the province concerning the airport has to :
1, be within the jurisdiction of the province ( noise by laws being one of them) and ( the nitty gritty not so nice part)
2, BE IN GOOD FAITH! The city cannot 'pretend' to pass legislation concerning noise, etc., in an attempt to close the airport! Any legislation that smells of a bad faith (or that is just flat out factually) outside the scope of its autorhity might be struck, out!
POINTZ:
1, Toronto might not be able to shut down the airport;
2, any attempt to do so, by pretending legations not about shutting down the airport but, in fact is, or will have that effect, may be struck out
3. ANSWER: (a) look at how other airports have been shut down- and follow that. If federal legislation or an order of the appropriate minister is required, Toronto might not get its way
(b) work with the, thus far, powerless GTA MP's
(c) pester the hell out of Paul Martin
(d) being very careful, consider mentioning to Torntonians during the next federal election that the Feds are putting the screws to Toronto -- problem - we do need the federal help for cities, so in doing so, we might blow our brains out!
And here's a tiny bit of a case that proves it!
1990 CarswellBC 284
52 B.C.L.R. (2d) 187, [1991] 2 W.W.R. 195, 120 N.R. 109, 77 D.L.R. (4th) 25, [1990] 3 S.C.R. 1273
Whitbread v. Walley
WHITBREAD v. WALLEY et al.
Supreme Court of Canada
Dickson C.J.C.[FN*], Lamer C.J.C.[FN**], La Forest, L'Heureux-Dubé,
Sopinka, Gonthier and Cory JJ.
headnote bit:
Constitutional Law -- Constitution Act, 1867 -- Distribution of legislative powers -- Navigation and shipping -- Defendant operating pleasure craft, owned by others, in tidal waters -- Passenger injured when boat hitting rocks -- Canada Shipping Act provisions limiting tortious liability, being in pith and substance a matter of Canadian maritime law, and intra vires Parliament -- Federal jurisdiction over navigation and shipping encompassing vessels operating on inland waterways, and extending to pleasure craft as well as commercial vessels -- Defendant's tortious liability limited under Act.
The judgment of the court was delivered by La Forest J.:
...
26 The foregoing suggests that Parliament's jurisdiction over maritime law should be viewed as territorially coextensive with its jurisdiction in respect of navigable waterways. This is consistent with McIntyre J.'s view in ITO that "the ambit of Canadian maritime law is limited only by the constitutional division of powers in the Constitution Act, 1867" [p. 774], for, as it has often been stated, Parliament's jurisdiction under s. 91(10) is to be broadly interpreted : see Queddy River Driving Boom Co. v. Davidson (1883), 10 S.C.R. 222 at 232 [N.B.], per Ritchie C.J.C.; Montreal v. Montreal Harbour Commr., supra, at pp. 312-13; Ref. re Validity of Indust. Rel. & Disputes Investigation Act ("the Stevedoring Case"), [1955] S.C.R. 529 at 535, [1955] 3 D.L.R. 721, per Kerwin C.J.C. at p. 541, per Taschereau J. at p. 548, per Rand J. at p. 559, per Kellock J. at p. 591, and per Abbott J.; and Triglav v. Terrasses Jewellers Inc., supra, at p. 289, per Chouinard J. It would also be consistent with my comments in Chartwell, supra, speaking on this point for the court, to the effect that the amalgam that was incorporated into this country as maritime law consisted of the legal principles which the Court of Admiralty applied in respect of matters that arose within the territorial limits of its jurisdiction, as well as those which the ordinary courts of common law applied to matters which, although of a maritime nature, arose beyond the ebb and flow of the tide: see pp. 695-96. Finally, the proposition that all tortious liability (and other forms of liability that fall within the ambit of Canadian maritime law) that arises as a result of the use of navigable waterways falls within the scope of federal maritime law is supported by the unanimous decision of this court in Ont. (A.G.) v. Pembina Explor. Can. Ltd., [1989] 1 S.C.R. 206, 57 D.L.R. (4th) 710, 33 O.A.C. 321, (sub nom. William Siddal & Sons Fisheries v. Pembina Explor. Can. Ltd.) 92 N.R. 137. There, the question was as to whether a provincially-created small claims court had jurisdiction with respect to a claim for damages sustained by a ship's fishing nets that had become entangled with an unmarked gas well in Lake Erie, a provincial inland waterway. Speaking for the court, I ventured to express the view, at p. 212, that I had no doubt that the incident fell under the "broad purview of admiralty law." While this assessment was technically obiter, it accorded with a number of lower court authorities, all of which dealt with the question of whether provincial superior courts had any jurisdiction in respect of accidents on inland waterways, and all of which approached that question on the basis that any such jurisdiction would be concurrent with that of the federal Exchequer Court: see Shipman v. Phinn (1914), 31 O.L.R. 113, 19 D.L.R. 305 (H.C.); Smith v. Fecampois, [1929] 2 D.L.R. 925 (N.S.T.D.); Horne v. Krezan , 14 W.W.R. 625, [1955] 4 D.L.R. 391 (Alta. T.D.); Pile Foundations Ltd. v. Selkirk Silica Co. (1967), 59 W.W.R. 622 (Man. Q.B.); Harvey v. Tarala (1977), 6 Sask. R. 74 (Q.B.). That view would be tenable only if the liability arising from such accidents was a matter of federal maritime or admiralty law......
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30 The inclusion of pleasure craft within the ambit of maritime law gains further support, by way of analogy, from the jurisprudence on the federal government's jurisdiction over aeronautics. Once Canadian waters are conceived of as a single navigational network, it becomes clear that the activity of navigation is very akin to the activity of aeronautics, and it seems to me that the factual similarity should lead to similar constitutional treatment. In Johannesson v. West St. Paul (Rural Mun.), [1952] 1 S.C.R. 292, 69 C.R.T.C. 105, [1951] 4 D.L.R. 609 [Man.], this court ruled that aeronautics was a distinct legislative matter that came within Parliament's power to make laws for the "Peace, Order and good Government of Canada." This was because it was a matter that went "beyond local or provincial concern or interests and must from its inherent nature be the concern of the Dominion as a whole" [p. 328]. As such, it satisfied the test espoused in Ont. (A.G.) v. Can. Temperance Fed., [1946] A.C. 193 at 205, 1 C.R. 229, [1946] 2 W.W.R. 1, 85 C.C.C. 225, [1946] 2 D.L.R. 1 (P.C.) [Ont.]. As pointed out by Professor Hogg, dicta in both Johannesson and the earlier Privy Council decisions of Re Reg. & Control of Aeronautics in Can. ("the Aeronautics Ref."), [1932] A.C. 54, [1931] 3 W.W.R. 625, 39 C.R.C. 108, [1932] 1 D.L.R. 58, suggested that federal jurisdiction over aeronautics extended to intraprovincial as well as interprovincial aeronautics, and the Court of Appeal for British Columbia quickly ruled to this effect: see Jorgensen v. North Vancouver Magistrates (1959), 28 W.W.R. 265, 30 C.R. 333, 124 C.C.C. 39, and Hogg at p. 496. Professor Hogg goes on to suggest at p. 496 that:
... the most plausible reason for subjecting local airlines to the same regime as the interprovincial and international airlines is the fact that both kinds of carriers share the same airspace and ground facilities, so that their operations are necessarily integrated.
31 In my view, this interpretation of the jurisprudence on federal aeronautics jurisdiction is directly applicable to the case at bar and the question it raises as to the scope of Parliament's jurisdiction over maritime law. What Professor Hogg says of local airlines and interprovincial and international airlines can, with appropriate modifications, equally be said of pleasure craft and commercial ships -- they share the same waterways and (in many cases) the same port facilities "so that their operations are necessarily integrated." This integration points to the need for a uniform regulatory and legal régime in the case of navigation and shipping as much as it does in the case of aeronautics. It points, in other words, to the need for a broad reading of the relevant head of federal jurisdiction. I would think that, if this need can be accommodated in respect of aeronautics, which comes within Parliament's narrowly interpreted power to legislate for the "Peace, Order and good Government" of Canada, it can surely be accommodated in respect of the activities that come within Parliament's jurisdiction over navigation and shipping, since, as I pointed out earlier, that head of power has always been broadly interpreted.
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