2010 SCC 39, Released October 15, 2010
Constitutional Law – Division of Powers –
Aerodrome
This case concerns an aerodrome built by two private citizens on
lands zoned "agricultural" in Québec. The Province
argued that the placement of the aerodrome at issue violated its
planning law, namely that land designated "agricultural"
by the Province had to be used for that purpose, subject to prior
authorization from a provincial board for other uses.
The Court applied the doctrine of interjurisdictional immunity,
even though the doctrine received much theoretical diminishment by
the Court in Canadian Western Bank v. Alberta, 2007 SCC
22. Interjurisdictional immunity may render an otherwise valid
provincial law inapplicable as the effects of its application
entrench on the core of a protected power within Parliament's
jurisdiction. The test is whether the impugned law comes within the
"basic, minimum and unassailable content", or essential
jurisdiction, of the
