page_title: Interjurisdictional immunity
section_title: Expansion of doctrine
hierarchical_section_title: Interjurisdictional immunity / Expansion of doctrine
caption_attribution_description: English: Aerial view of Toronto Pearson International Airport Suomi: Ilmakuva Toronton Pearsonin kansainvälisestä lentoasemasta
context_page_description: In Canadian Constitutional law, interjurisdictional immunity is the legal doctrine that determines which legislation arising from one level of jurisdiction may be applicable to matters covered at another level. Interjurisdictional immunity is an exception to the pith and substance doctrine, as it stipulates that there is a core to each federal subject matter that cannot be reached by provincial laws. While a provincial law that imposes a tax on banks may be ruled intra vires, as it is not within the protected core of banking, a provincial law that limits the rights of creditors to enforce their debts would strike at such a core and be ruled inapplicable.
  The paramountcy doctrine states that if two pieces of legislation meet, regulate the same activities, and conflict, the federal legislation is paramount, prevails and renders the provincial legislation inoperative. In contrast, the interjurisdictional immunity doctrine is activated even if there is no meeting of legislation or contradiction between federal and provincial statutes. It requires only for the provincial legislation to impact federal things, persons or undertakings significantly.
context_section_description: Until 1966, undertakings which came within federal jurisdiction were held to be immune from otherwise valid provincial laws only if the laws had the effect of sterilizing, paralyzing or impairing the federally authorized activity. However, the scope of the doctrine was expanded in Bell Canada (1966), where a provincial law prescribing a minimum wage was held not to apply in 1966 when it was determined that a valid law could not apply, as such a law "affects a vital part of the management and operation of the undertaking". It did not matter that no sterilization, paralysis or impairment had occurred.
  This doctrine was affirmed in 1988 when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in three cases that provincial occupational health and safety laws were held to be inapplicable to three federal undertakings engaged in interprovincial transportation and communication. In Bell Canada v Quebec (1988), Beetz J declared:
  254.  ...the management of these undertakings and their labour relations are matters which are part of this basic and unassailable minimum, as these matters are essential and vital elements of any undertaking. How is it possible to disagree with this? How can the exclusive power to regulate these undertakings not include at least the exclusive power to make laws relating to their management? Additionally, just as the management of the undertaking and working conditions determined by agreement or by operation of law are parts of the same whole in labour law, how can the exclusive power to legislate as to management of an undertaking not include the equally exclusive power to make laws regarding its labour relations? To deny this, as the critics have done, is to strip the exclusive federal power of its primary content and transform it simply into a power to make ancillary laws connected to a primary power with no real independent content, apart from the power to regulate rates and the availability and quality of services such as telephone services or railway services. The latter undoubtedly fall within the exclusive classes of subject represented by such federal undertakings, but there is nothing in the constitutional provisions, rules or precedents to indicate that the exclusive legislative authority of Parliament must or may be confined to so narrow a field. Indeed, rates and the availability and quality of services are inseparable from the wage scale that the undertaking must pay, the availability of its manpower, leave, vacation—in short, working conditions.
  The doctrine was modified in Irwin Toy to specify that:
  the "affecting a vital part" test only applied to provincial laws that were intended to apply directly to a federal undertaking, but
  where a provincial law had only an indirect effect, it would not be inapplicable unless it impaired a vital part of that undertaking.
caption: GTAA v. Mississauga[7] held that interjurisdictional immunity protected Toronto Pearson International Airport from municipal development fees, due to federal jurisdiction over aeronautics.
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