Provincial legislatures cannot require companies incorporated under Federal law to obtain licenses as a condition for exercising their corporate powers or suing in court, as this interferes with their federally granted status, although Provinces may still impose direct taxes and regulate land holding.

Viscount Haldane:-

In this case their Lordships are called on to interpret and apply the implications of a judgment, delivered by the Judicial Committee on 2nd November, 1914, in John Deere Plow Company v. Wharton (1), It was then laid down that the BRITISH NORTH AMERICA ACT of 1867 had so enabled the Parliament of the Dominion to prescribe the extent of the powers of companies incorporated under Dominion law with objects which extended to the Dominion generally, that the status and powers so far as there in question of one of the three appellant companies could not, as matter of principle be validly interfered with by the Provincial Legislature of British Columbia.

It was held that laws which had been passed by the Legislature of that Province, and which sought to compel a Dominion Company to obtain a certain kind of Provincial licence or to be registered in the way brought before the Judicial Committee, as a condition of exercising its powers in the Province or of suing in its Courts, were ultra vires. The reason given was that their Lordships interpreted what had been done by the Province in that case as interfering in a manner not consistent with the principles laid down with the status and corporate capacity of a Company with Dominion objects to which the Parliament of Canada had given powers to carry on its business in every part of the Dominion. In the consolidated appeals now before their Lordships analogous questions are raised by legislation in varying forms enacted in three other Provinces, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario.

Since the decision in 1914 the Province of Saskatchewan has passed an Act, in 1915, which supersedes its earlier Companies Acts, and apparently seeks to avoid the features in these which might conflict with the decision of this Committee in

John Deere Plow Company v. Wharton , (1915) A. C. 330 as to the British Columbia legislation. The question raised as regards Manitoba arises out of older legislation of 1913 (subsequently amended and re-enacted in 1916), and as regards Ontario under an older Ontario Companies Act and the Extra-Provincial Corporations Act of 1914. No question is raised from British Columbia, or from any Provinces other than Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario on this occasion.

The proceedings out of which the present appeals arise concern several Dominion companies, and are, as to Saskatchewan, two cases before a magistrate for infraction of the provisions of the Provincial Companies Act, and an action by a shareholder in one of the Dominion Companies concerned, to restrain it from attempting to carry on its business without complying with the requirements of the Companies Act of the Province. The main issue in all these proceedings is substantially the same. In Manitoba an analogous question was raised in a shareholder's action, and also in an action by the Attorney-General of the Province. The main issue in Ontario was similar to that in Saskatchewan, but there was also raised a question as to whether a Dominion company could hold land in the Province without being authorized to do so by its Government, in accordance with Ontario statute law. In the proceedings referred to judgments were delivered in the Courts of first instance and by the appellate Courts in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and by the Courts of first instance and the appellate Court in Ontario. In the cases in the two former Provinces there was an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, but in the Ontario litigation the appeal has been brought directly to the King in Council from the judgment of the appellate Court of the Province. On 18th August, 1919, special leave to appeal to the Privy Council was granted; and it was ordered that the appeals, six in number, from judgments which had been adverse to the Dominion companies concerned, should be consolidated and heard together. The Attorneys-General for Canada and for the Provinces have intervened throughout. It will be convenient, having regard to the course taken