The main legal principle established in the judgment is that the Parliament of Canada has broad legislative authority, including the power to regulate and control matters of national interest and importance, such as aerial navigation, under S.132 of the British North America Act, 1867.

The Lord Chancellor.-

This appeal raises an important question as between the Dominion and the Provinces of Canada regarding the right to control and regulate aeronautics, including the granting of certificates to persons to act as pilots, the inspection and licensing of aircraft, and the inspection and licensing of aerodromes and air-stations. The question is whether the subject is one on which the Dominion Parliament is alone competent to legislate, or whether it is in each Province so related to provincial property and civil rights and local matters as to exclude the Dominion from any (or from more than a very limited) jurisdiction in respect of it.

The Supreme Court of Canada has decided the question in its several branches adversely to the claims of the Dominion, and has held in effect that while the Dominion has a considerable field of jurisdiction in the matter under various heads of S.91, British North America Act, 1867, there is also a local field of jurisdiction for the Provinces, and that the Dominion jurisdiction does not extend so far as to permit it to deal with the subject in the broad way in which it has attempted to deal with it in the legislation under consideration.

During the sittings of the Peace Conference in Paris at the close of the European War, a Convention relating to the regulation of aerial navigation, dated 13th October 1919, was drawn up by a Commission constituted by the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference. That Convention was signed by the representatives of the Allied and Associated Powers, including Canada, and was ratified by His Majesty on behalf of the British Empire on 1st June 1922. It is now in force between the British Empire and seventeen other States.

With a view to performing her obligations as part of the British Empire under this Convention, which was then in course of preparation, the Parliament of Canada enacted the Air Board Act, Chap.11, Statutes of Canada, 1919 (1st Session), which, with an amendment thereto, was consolidated in the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1927, under the title of the Aeronautics Act, Ch. 3. It is to be noted however that the Act does not by reason of its reproduction in the Revised Statutes take effect as a new law. The Governor-General in Council, on 31st December 1919, pursuant to the Air Board Act, issued detailed "Air Regulations" which, with certain amendments, are now in force. By the National Defence Act, 1922, the Minister of National Defence thereafter exercised the duties and functions of the Air Board.

By these Statutes and the Air Regulations, and the amendments thereto, provision is made for the regulation and control in a general and comprehensive way of aerial navigation in Canada, and over the territorial waters thereof. In particular, S. 4, Aeronautics Act, purports to give the Minister of National Defence a general power to regulate and control, subject to approval by the Governor in Council (with statutory force and under the sanction of penalties on summary conviction), aerial navigation over Canada and her territorial waters including power to regulate the licensing of pilots, aircraft, aerodromes, and commercial services; the conditions under which aircraft may be used for goods, mails and passengers, or their carriage over any part of Canada; the prohibition (absolute or conditional) of flying over prescribed areas, aerial routes, and provision for safe and proper flying.

Their Lordships were told during the course of the argument that no Provincial Legislature had passed any such legislation, but that this had not prevented the progress of aeronautical development in the Provinces. It appears, for example, that in Ontario there has been established subject to these regulations one of the most complete survey services in the Empire, and that it is working most harmoniously. Their Lordships are not aware that any practical difficulty has arisen in consequence of the general control of flying being in the hands of the Dominion, but at