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