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Municipal - Vires. 114957 Canada Ltée (Spraytech, Société d'arrosage) v. Hudson (Town)
In 114957 Canada Ltée (Spraytech, Société d'arrosage) v. Hudson (Town) (SCC, 2021) the Supreme Court of in an historic environmental case, considered the vires of a Quebec town by-law restricting pesticide use to non-cosmetic purposes:18 In R. v. Sharma, 1993 CanLII 165 (SCC), [1993] 1 S.C.R. 650, at p. 668, this Court recognized “the principle that, as statutory bodies, municipalities ‘may exercise only those powers expressly conferred by statute, those powers necessarily or fairly implied by the expressed power in the statute, and those indispensable powers essential and not merely convenient to the effectuation of the purposes of the corporation’ (Makuch, Canadian Municipal and Planning Law (1983), at p. 115)”. Included in this authority are “general welfare” powers, conferred by provisions in provincial enabling legislation, on which municipalities can draw. As I. M. Rogers points out, “the legislature cannot possibly foresee all the powers that are necessary to the statutory equipment of its creatures. . . . Undoubtedly the inclusion of ‘general welfare’ provisions was intended to circumvent, to some extent, the effect of the doctrine of ultra vires which puts the municipalities in the position of having to point to an express grant of authority to justify each corporate act” (The Law of Canadian Municipal Corporations (2nd ed. (loose-leaf)), Cum. Supp. to vol. 1, at p. 367).
19 Section 410 C.T.A. is an example of such a general welfare provision and supplements the specific grants of power in s. 412. More open-ended or “omnibus” provisions such as s. 410 allow municipalities to respond expeditiously to new challenges facing local communities, without requiring amendment of the provincial enabling legislation. There are analogous provisions in other provinces’ and territories’ municipal enabling legislation: see Municipal Government Act, S.A. 1994, c. M-26.1, ss. 3(c) and 7; Local Government Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c. 323, s. 249; Municipal Act, S.M. 1996, c. 58, C.C.S.M. c. M225, ss. 232 and 233; Municipalities Act, R.S.N.B. 1973, c. M-22, s. 190(2), First Schedule; Municipal Government Act, S.N.S. 1998, c. 18, s. 172; Cities, Towns and Villages Act, R.S.N.W.T. 1988, c. C-8, ss. 54 and 102; Municipal Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. M.45, s. 102; Municipal Act, R.S.Y. 1986, c. 119, s. 271.
20 While enabling provisions that allow municipalities to regulate for the “general welfare” within their territory authorize the enactment of by-laws genuinely aimed at furthering goals such as public health and safety, it is important to keep in mind that such open-ended provisions do not confer an unlimited power. Rather, courts faced with an impugned by-law enacted under an “omnibus” provision such as s. 410 C.T.A. must be vigilant in scrutinizing the true purpose of the by-law. In this way, a municipality will not be permitted to invoke the implicit power granted under a “general welfare” provision as a basis for enacting by-laws that are in fact related to ulterior objectives, whether mischievous or not. As a Justice of the Ontario Divisional Court, Cory J. commented instructively on this subject in Re Weir and The Queen (1979), 1979 CanLII 1871 (ON SC), 26 O.R. (2d) 326 (Div. Ct.), at p. 334. Although he found that the City of Toronto’s power to regulate matters pertaining to health, safety and general welfare (conferred by the Municipal Act, R.S.O. 1970, c. 284, s. 242) empowered it to pass a by-law regulating smoking in public retail shops, Cory J. also made the following remark about the enabling provision: “There is no doubt that a by-law passed pursuant to the provisions of s. 242 must be approached with caution. If such were not the case, the municipality could be deemed to be empowered to legislate in a most sweeping manner.”
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21 .... As a result, since there is no specific provision in the provincial enabling legislation referring to pesticides, the by-law must fall within the purview of s. 410(1) C.T.A. The party challenging a by-law’s validity bears the burden of proving that it is ultra vires: see Kuchma v. Rural Municipality of Tache, 1945 CanLII 27 (SCC), [1945] S.C.R. 234, at p. 239, and Montréal (City of) v. Arcade Amusements Inc., 1985 CanLII 97 (SCC), [1985] 1 S.C.R. 368, at p. 395.
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23 Section 410(1) C.T.A. provides that councils may make by‑laws:(1) To secure peace, order, good government, health and general welfare in the territory of the municipality, provided such by‑laws are not contrary to the laws of Canada, or of Québec, nor inconsistent with any special provision of this Act or of the charter. In Nanaimo (City) v. Rascal Trucking Ltd., [2000] 1 S.C.R. 342, 2000 SCC 13, at para. 36, this Court quoted with approval the following statement by McLachlin J. (as she then was) in Shell Canada Products Ltd. v. Vancouver (City), 1994 CanLII 115 (SCC), [1994] 1 S.C.R. 231, at p. 244:Recent commentary suggests an emerging consensus that courts must respect the responsibility of elected municipal bodies to serve the people who elected them and exercise caution to avoid substituting their views of what is best for the citizens for those of municipal councils. Barring clear demonstration that a municipal decision was beyond its powers, courts should not so hold. In cases where powers are not expressly conferred but may be implied, courts must be prepared to adopt the “benevolent construction” which this Court referred to in Greenbaum, and confer the powers by reasonable implication. Whatever rules of construction are applied, they must not be used to usurp the legitimate role of municipal bodies as community representatives. [Emphasis added.] ....
26 In Shell, supra, at pp. 276-77, Sopinka J. for the majority quoted the following with approval from Rogers, supra, § 64.1:In approaching a problem of construing a municipal enactment a court should endeavour firstly to interpret it so that the powers sought to be exercised are in consonance with the purposes of the corporation. The provision at hand should be construed with reference to the object of the municipality: to render services to a group of persons in a locality with a view to advancing their health, welfare, safety and good government. In that case, Sopinka J. enunciated the test of whether the municipal enactment was “passed for a municipal purpose”. Provisions such as s. 410(1) C.T.A., while benefiting from the generosity of interpretation discussed in Nanaimo, supra, must have a reasonable connection to the municipality’s permissible objectives. As stated in Greenbaum, supra, at p. 689: “municipal by‑laws are to be read to fit within the parameters of the empowering provincial statute where the by‑laws are susceptible to more than one interpretation. However, courts must be vigilant in ensuring that municipalities do not impinge upon the civil or common law rights of citizens in passing ultra vires by‑laws”.
27 Whereas in Shell, the enactments’ purpose was found to be “to affect matters beyond the boundaries of the City without any identifiable benefit to its inhabitants” (p. 280), that is not the case here. The Town’s By-law 270 responded to concerns of its residents about alleged health risks caused by non-essential uses of pesticides within Town limits. Unlike Shell, in which the Court felt bound by the municipal enactments’ “detailed recital of . . . purposes” (p. 277), the by-law at issue requires what Sopinka J. called the reading in of an implicit purpose. Based on the distinction between essential and non-essential uses of pesticides, it is reasonable to conclude that the Town by-law’s purpose is to minimize the use of allegedly harmful pesticides in order to promote the health of its inhabitants. This purpose falls squarely within the “health” component of s. 410(1). As R. Sullivan appositely explains in a hypothetical example illustrating the purposive approach to statutory interpretation:Suppose, for example, that a municipality passed a by-law prohibiting the use of chemical pesticides on residential lawns. With no additional information, one might well conclude that the purpose of this by-law was to protect persons from health hazards contained in the chemical spray. This inference would be based on empirical beliefs about the harms chemical pesticides can cause and the risks of exposure created by their use on residential lawns. It would also be based on assumptions about the relative value of grass, insects and persons in society and the desirability of possible consequences of the by-law, such as putting people out of work, restricting the free use of property, interfering with the conduct of businesses and the like. These assumptions make it implausible to suppose that the municipal council was trying to promote the spread of plant-destroying insects or to put chemical workers out of work, but plausible to suppose that it was trying to suppress a health hazard.
(Driedger on the Construction of Statutes (3rd ed. 1994), at p. 53) Kennedy J. correctly found (at pp. 230-31) that the Town Council, “faced with a situation involving health and the environment”, “was addressing a need of their community.” In this manner, the municipality is attempting to fulfill its role as what the Ontario Court of Appeal has called a “trustee of the environment” (Scarborough v. R.E.F. Homes Ltd. (1979), 9 M.P.L.R. 255, at p. 257).
28 The appellants claim that By-law 270 is discriminatory and therefore ultra vires because of what they identify as impermissible distinctions that affect their commercial activities. There is no specific authority in the C.T.A. for these distinctions. Writing for the Court in Sharma, supra, at p. 668, Iacobucci J. stated the principle that:. . . in Montréal (City of) v. Arcade Amusements Inc., supra, this Court recognized that discrimination in the municipal law sense was no more permissible between than within classes (at pp. 405‑6). Further, the general reasonableness or rationality of the distinction is not at issue: discrimination can only occur where the enabling legislation specifically so provides or where the discrimination is a necessary incident to exercising the power delegated by the province (Montréal (City of) v. Arcade Amusements Inc., supra, at pp. 404‑6). [Emphasis added.] See also Shell, supra, at p. 282; Allard Contractors Ltd. v. Coquitlam (District), 1993 CanLII 45 (SCC), [1993] 4 S.C.R. 371, at p. 413.
29 Without drawing distinctions, By-law 270 could not achieve its permissible goal of aiming to improve the health of the Town’s inhabitants by banning non-essential pesticide use. If all pesticide uses and users were treated alike, the protection of health and welfare would be sub-optimal. For example, withdrawing the special status given to farmers under the by-law’s s. 4 would work at cross-purposes with its salubrious intent. Section 4 thus justifiably furthers the objective of By-law 270. Having held that the Town can regulate the use of pesticides, I conclude that the distinctions impugned by the appellants for restricting their businesses are necessary incidents to the power delegated by the province under s. 410(1) C.T.A. They are “so absolutely necessary to the exercise of those powers that [authorization has] to be found in the enabling provisions, by necessary inference or implicit delegation”; Arcade Amusements, supra, at p. 414, quoted in Greenbaum, supra, at p. 695.
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