We reported earlier in this blog on the dispute between the City of Hamilton and Canada Post. To recall, the City adopted a bylaw that required Canada Post to obtain a City permit before placing community mailboxes on City streets.
Canada Post challenged the constitutional validity of the bylaw and, on June 11, 2015, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice issued its decision. The Court agreed with Canada Post and declared the bylaw invalid.
To quote some of the Court's reasons:
[87] The bylaw would in effect give the City the final say of the location of CMBs after a permit application process which has no relationship to the temporal exigencies facing CP, both in terms of satisfying its existing collective agreements and CP's cost reduction goals to achieve financial sustainability in an era of steadily reducing transaction mail.
[88] Therefore, the bylaw insofar as it seeks to create a permit
application process determining the location of CMBs is of no
effect.
...
[97] ...The by-law directly encroaches upon an
activity which is within CP's mandate. It
is a core activity relative to how mail is deposited, stored and
delivered. ... The by-law cannot be characterized as
incidentally affecting the operation of the mail
.... The By-law was purposely created by councillors with the
avowed intention of stopping the transition of home delivery to
CMBs [community mailboxes], an intention expressed in a by-law
which essentially takes over CP's decision making in choosing a
business model. The "pith and substance" of the
by-law by bringing in the location of CMBs within its permit
application process is encroaching upon the exclusive domain of CP
and is ultra vires the City's jurisdiction.
...
[101] It is obvious from my reasons thus far that the court
considers [the bylaw] a significant serious trammelling
of CP's federal power to locate its receptacles
where it deems appropriate, as part of its mandate to receive,
store and distribute mail. Those activities are core to the
undertaking of CP. ...
[emphasis added]
The complete decision in Canada Post v. City of Hamilton, 2015 ONSC 3615 can be found here.
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