In Northern Construction Enterprises Inc. v. Halifax (Regional Municipality), 2015 NSCA 44, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal recently considered the extent to which a municipality can regulate activities related to a quarry.
In Nova Scotia, the provincial government has reserved the right to regulate the location of quarries, but has delegated to municipalities the authority to regulate development adjacent to quarries. In Northern Construction, one of the key issues was whether crushing and screening equipment (a crushing spread) was part of a quarry, and thus outside municipal regulatory jurisdiction.
According to the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal, the crushing spread was part of a quarry and could not be prohibited by the municipality. In the Court's view, the province reserved the right in connection with "quarries" and not in connection with "extraction". As such, the province reserved the right in connection with all quarries, including aggregate quarries where the process involves reducing large boulders into marketable aggregate.
The Court of Appeal provided a useful summary of case law on benevolent and purposive construction of bylaws and aptly stated that: "[16] ...No approach to statutory interpretation, however benevolent, purposive and contextual, can create authority that does not exist. It must either be expressed or reasonably implied from the bestowing legislation. After all, without provincial delegation, municipalities, as creatures of statute, would have no authority. ..."
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